PRIVATE BUSINESS

Committee of Selection

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [16 October],
	That Mr. John Hayes be discharged from the Committee of Selection and Mr. Peter Luff be added to the Committee.— [Mr. Woolas.]

Hon. Members: Object.
	Debate to be resumed tomorrow.

Oral Answers to Questions

HEALTH

The Secretary of State was asked—

Diabetes

Adrian Sanders: If he will make a statement on progress towards a national service framework for diabetes.

Jacqui Smith: We recently published two important national targets for the NHS to improve diabetes care over the next three years. We are currently finalising the wider delivery strategy that will underpin those targets and the national service framework standards, published last December. We shall publish the delivery strategy shortly.

Adrian Sanders: Given the ever-increasing rise in the number of diabetics being diagnosed, are the Government satisfied that the sums of money being talked about will be sufficient? What mechanisms will be in place to ensure that the Government's targets are met?

Jacqui Smith: I know that the hon. Gentleman and the all-party group play an important part and have a close interest in this issue, and I welcome that. The two targets that I outlined, for improving the monitoring and treatment provided through primary care and for ensuring that diabetic retinopathy screening is more widely available, are in the planning and performance framework. That is the programme for the NHS for the next three years, and it will receive historic levels of funding—real-terms annual increases of 7.5 per cent. Compared with even the wilder dreams of the Liberal Democrats, that is a considerable investment.
	As I made clear, both the standards produced last December, which set out the basis and the direction of travel for local health services, and the delivery strategy that we will publish shortly will put some flesh on the bones of that policy. The strategy will be delivered at local level because diabetologists, specialist nurses, GPs, dieticians, podiatrists, ophthalmologists and, increasingly, patients managing their own care need to be able, within those national standards, to make the important decisions. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that, thanks to this Government, there will be extra investment to help to support those decisions.

David Stewart: As secretary of the all-party diabetes group, may I ask the Minister when she expects to receive advice from the UK screening committee on the possibility of having a screening programme for type-2 diabetics?

Jacqui Smith: I recognise my hon. Friend's important contribution to the all-party group.
	As we outlined in the standards, there is an important role for the national screening committee in spelling out the most effective way of developing a screening programme for type-2 diabetics. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that, given that diabetes disproportionately affects people in disadvantaged areas and people from black and minority ethnic communities, and given that it is often causally related to coronary heart disease, it is important that we find the most effective way of targeting that screening programme and of ensuring that we effectively develop the services for those affected. We look to the national screening committee to come forward with more advice, and we may then need to consider how to pilot the programme to ensure that we are targeting it in the right places.

Nicholas Soames: Given the truly wicked and insidious nature of the disease, is the hon. Lady sure that the gross discorrelation between services throughout the country—there is little consistency or sameness of service—will be addressed quickly enough by the steps the Government have taken? I accept that the Government have a big investment programme, but is she sure that it will happen quickly enough? Will she discuss with officials what steps could be taken to bring about greater efficiency in the service, so that more people get the same high-quality service?

Jacqui Smith: The hon. Gentleman asks an important question: how can we ensure that the good practice found in some parts of the country is spread more uniformly? That is the reason for the development of the national service framework. The standards published in December were the first ever national standards for diabetes care. As we have developed the delivery strategy, we have been careful to do so in partnership with those who will have to make it work—people working in primary care, diabetes specialists and, importantly, patients themselves, because patients are increasingly able to manage their condition. I am confident that the national service framework and the process of developing it will make an important difference to people with diabetes, but so, too, will the investment—investment that has already been made, as well as future investment—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not like to interrupt the Minister, but I need briefer replies.

Poverty and Deprivation

Tony Lloyd: What plans he has to give greater emphasis in the allocation of funds to poverty and deprivation as causal factors of poor health.

Andy Burnham: If he will make a statement on progress with the development of a new funding formula for primary care trusts, with special reference to social deprivation.

Alan Milburn: The existing formula used to allocate national health service resources is under review. Later this year, when I announce resources for local health services, distribution will take place based on a new formula that takes better account of health needs, which I hope will contribute to reductions in health inequalities.

Tony Lloyd: My right hon. Friend will be aware that the historic formula inherited from Conservative Governments was perverse, in that it rewarded areas politically, not on the basis of health needs. Given that almost the whole of the north suffers from poor health, and that northern cities such as Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle come near the bottom of most health tables, will he guarantee that the review will be driven not by the needs of London and the south-east, as his Department told my office this morning, but by a recognition that health deprivation is a nationwide issue and that funding is needed in northern cities such as Manchester?

Alan Milburn: You always learn something new at Health questions, Mr. Speaker. We have taken some steps to address this country's severe inequalities in health outcomes. It is worth reminding the House that, for 50 years or more, the gap between rich and poor in terms of health outcomes has been widening, not narrowing. One of the ways to tackle that is to get the resources in the right place, according to need. My hon. Friend is aware that in this financial year we have allocated an extra #148 million—including an extra #4 million for his part of the country and Manchester—specifically to deal with those issues, but there is no doubt that there is more to do.
	In any review, whether of local government resources or NHS resources, we have to get the balance right between two competing pressures: different labour market pressures and different needs pressures in different parts of the country. Only if we get that right will we get resources in the right place.

Andy Burnham: The Secretary of State will know that people in Leigh and the communities represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) are more likely to develop chronic illness than people elsewhere in the country, and on average they do so at a much younger age—in my area, at 53 as opposed to 60. That places great strain on the local NHS, but the extra costs of providing health care in former mining areas, where there is a high incidence of chronic illness, are simply not picked up by the current formula. May I urge him to use his welcome review of health funding to right that historical wrong and to introduce a new formula that, while recognising the other pressures he mentioned, gives full weight and priority to deprivation and chronic ill health?

Alan Milburn: We will try to do precisely that. Both my hon. Friends are due to come and see me soon to discuss the needs of Manchester and the surrounding areas and to make their case face to face. Later this year, for the first time, we will allocate resources directly to primary care trusts for the next few years. I confirm that when we do so, that allocation will be based on a new formula that addresses the issues my hon. Friends have raised.
	It is important that we do that. Our intention is to improve the health of the nation overall, but given that there is a such a health deficit in the poorest communities, it must also be right to aim to close this country's health gap, so that we improve the health of the poorest people fastest. I hope that that objective is shared on both sides of the House. We have begun to try to put that right: for example, we have targeted intervention and treatment rates for coronary heart disease in those parts of the country where its incidence is greatest—there has not always been a straightforward correlation between treatment rates and incidence rates. The problems will take some time to put right, but we have an opportunity to do that now because we have the resources to ensure a more equitable distribution.

David Cameron: As well as poverty and deprivation, will the Secretary of State consider scarcity and rurality in terms of funding, especially for social services? There are three excellent care homes in my constituency, all of whose future is in question. One of them, in Milton-under-Wychwood, meets all the Government's standards. Yet, because it is small, it is threatened with closure. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman understands that rural communities want small care homes close to where people live. The funding formula should reflect that.

Alan Milburn: I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman. He will be interested to know that those who have been examining how we distribute resources have been considering sparsity and rurality, for example. These are issues that he and other right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House have been raising. Obviously, we must get the balance right between how we distribute resources to areas of great health need, to areas with a rurality problem and to other areas with a labour market problem.
	I say in all candidness to the hon. Gentleman that we can redistribute resources only if we raise resources. The problem for the hon. Gentleman and for other Opposition Members is that they are now committed as a party to not matching the levels of resources that the Government are putting into the national health service. [Interruption.] Well, they shake their heads but that is what their document, XLeadership with a purpose", had to say, when it said that—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I call Mr. Hywel Williams.

Hywel Williams: Perhaps the Secretary of State will be familiar with the document entitled XLles yng Nghymru" or XWell Being in Wales", which was launched by the Minister with responsibilities for health and social services. The report contains the statement that
	Xaverage life expectancy in some parts of Wales is 5 years less than in others".
	Is that not an indictment of the Government's policy and the policy of previous Governments? Does the right hon. Gentleman not recognise that there is inequality of resource allocation not only within England, but between England and Wales and other countries?

Alan Milburn: As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is a matter for the Welsh Assembly.

John Cryer: In Rainham in the south of my constituency, which is a relatively deprived area, we recently had a successful campaign to save a GP surgery. Despite that, we still have a shortage of GPs. Frequently, GPs have a list of 3,000 to 3,500. My right hon. Friend will know that the current funding formula often militates against these areas because it makes it difficult to draw in resources to attract the additional GPs who are needed. Will the new funding formula recognise that, so that we can start to attract new GPs into the area?
	Secondly, does my right hon. Friend not find it extraordinary that certain Members argued for extra resources for their own areas but voted against the general proposal in the Lobby?

Alan Milburn: I do not know to whom my hon. Friend was alluding, but I can guess. He is absolutely right on two counts. First, all too often we have the poorest services serving the poorest communities. That must be put right.
	As for primary care services, for example, we are making available extra payments to try to entice GPs into some of the poorest communities. That is the right thing to do. There is a long way to go, and I hope that in time the policy will produce results.
	In my hon. Friend's constituency and parts of inner-city London, we are making available extra resources through the private finance initiative and through public-private partnerships to improve the primary care estate. We will not get GPs, district nurses and other primary care staff into these communities unless they are working in decent premises. The state of some of the premises that I have seen in the east end of London is pretty deplorable. That is not surprising because for decades—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) is chuntering from the Opposition Front Bench. He might take responsibility for the lack of investment over many decades, precisely in communities where the health needs are greatest.
	Secondly, my hon. Friend is right to say that it is pointless for right hon. and hon. Members to argue in the Chamber, and even more so in their constituencies, for more money for their local health service when they voted against money for the national health service.

David Tredinnick: Does the Secretary of State accept that the deprived are often unable to access complementary medicine? The problem is a direct result of his policy of not requiring primary care trusts to look closely at buying in acupuncturists, homeopaths or herbal therapists. Is he aware that, until he does that, there will always be inequality throughout the nation? It is only those who can pay for the 60,000 complementary practitioners who can get their services.

Alan Milburn: Question Time would not be Question Time without the hon. Gentleman. He is a ray of complementary therapy himself. As for primary care trusts and their freedom—[Interruption.] I know that he has some complementary medicine that he will pass to me later. That had better be a private transaction rather than a public one.
	Primary care trusts are free to commission appropriate services and should do so. We are moving to a situation in which more such decisions should be taken locally rather than nationally. We will try to provide more information to patients and primary care trusts so that they can make the right commissioning decisions, but in the end, the decision must be a matter for them rather than me.

Dennis Turner: The Secretary of State will be aware that Wolverhampton and the black country, through poverty and deprivation, have the highest incidence of heart disease in the west midlands. He will also be aware that bricklayers, glaziers, roofers and carpenters are very soon to be on site giving their skills to building a state-of-the-art #60 million coronary care centre to which he has given his full support. What he is not aware of, however, is the wonderful black country welcome that he will receive when he comes to Wolverhampton in January. He will be as welcome as the flowers in May.

Jacqui Smith: But not as pretty.

Alan Milburn: It is as my hon. Friend says. One cannot have everything.
	I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. Turner) for his support. There is absolutely no doubt that the cardiac centre is desperately needed in the part of the black country to which he refers. We have had to consider such issues not only in Wolverhampton, but in other areas such as Blackpool, where we recently met for the Labour party conference, and Teesside. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) has been advocating precisely such measures. When we considered the big diseases that were killing too many people in this country, we saw that there was a gap between where they occurred most and where treatment services were available. That gap had grown up over very many years. It is right to take corrective action so that we can locate services in the right places and save more lives.

Non-clinical Personnel

James Clappison: How many non-clinical NHS personnel were employed (a) on 1 May 1997 and (b) on the latest available date.

David Lammy: Work force numbers are collected annually on 30 September. On 30 September 1996, 299,080 non-clinical staff worked in the national health service, and on 30 September 2001, there were 312,820 staff.

James Clappison: Can the Minister tell us which is now the greater number in the NHS—the number of administrators and estate staff or the number of beds?

David Lammy: Clearly, between 1980 and 1997 the number of beds fell by 60,000. It is now increasing. The latest figures, for September 2001, show an increase of 714. The hon. Gentleman talks about managers, but the figure is small, at 3 per cent. of the NHS work force.

Laura Moffatt: Does my hon. Friend agree that the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) is making a huge mistake in comparing clinical and non-clinical staff? As I well know, having worked as a nurse for 25 years, our NHS contains people who are not trained as doctors or nurses but who are doing a fantastic job working in partnership with clinical staff. They include Maria Haines, who is here today and has devoted her life to Crawley hospital as a cleaner and cook. She values that position and wants to remain part of a fantastic organisation and not be judged against clinical staff.

David Lammy: My hon. Friend is exactly right. We on the Labour Benches value the work of porters, cleaners and caterers, and have sought to deal with capacity problems in the NHS. All members of the work force—doctors, nurses and support staff—were under-capacity because of the lack of investment from the Conservatives.

Liam Fox: It is worth reminding the Under-Secretary that the Labour party came to office in 1997 promising to cut NHS bureaucracy, yet it has increased to unprecedented levels. Will he explain the reason for the success in recruiting more administrators for the NHS and the failure of the Government's campaign to recruit overseas doctors? Only 26 doctors have been recruited through the Government's fellowship scheme; 19 through their global campaign. Not one is from the targeted group of heart and lung surgeons, and all came from Spain or Germany. Why have the Government been so successful in recruiting administrators and boosting bureaucracy, but so useless at attracting overseas doctors?

David Lammy: The hon. Gentleman misunderstands the policy of recruiting overseas doctors; it is a three-year programme. We are working towards recruiting 250 doctors, and we are on that journey because of the capacity problems that we inherited in 1997. In our 2001 manifesto, we made an obligation to increase the number of nurses by 20,000 and that of doctors by 10,000. At the time, the hon. Gentleman suggested that we were making promises that we could not fulfil. We have fulfilled our promise about nurses—we now have more than 20,000.

Consultants

Chris Mullin: What recent discussions he has had with representatives of the British Medical Association about the consultant contract; and if he will make a statement.

John Hutton: The Department agreed the framework for the proposed consultants' contract with the central consultants and specialists committee of the British Medical Association on 12 June. I last met representatives from the BMA to discuss the proposed new contract on 11 September.

Chris Mullin: In the light of the apparent rejection by consultants of the contract negotiated on their behalf by the BMA, and endorsed by the BMA's annual conference, will my right hon. Friend assure the House that not one penny of the many millions set aside to implement the new contract will find its way into the pockets of those who refuse to co-operate in reducing waiting lists?

John Hutton: Obviously, it would not be productive or useful for me to speculate on the outcome of the ballot. We shall have the result on Thursday. We have always made it clear that one of our principal objectives is to provide better rewards for consultants who make the biggest contribution to the NHS. That will remain the case.

Richard Taylor: My impression is that dissent among consultants about the proposed new contract relates to lack of trust and, in many places, poor relations between managers and clinical staff. What can the right hon. Gentleman do to improve those relations?

John Hutton: Again, I shall not speculate on the outcome of the ballot; we must wait and see. I believe that relationships between consultants and managers are pretty good throughout the NHS. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to draw to my attention specific examples of poor relationships, I shall be happy to examine them.

Bob Blizzard: Has my right hon. Friend read The Times report today that speculates that consultants are about to reject the new contract, which offers them a 15 per cent. pay rise? My constituents will be horrified that people who were trained through the public purse want to turn down a 15 per cent. pay rise, are unwilling to join a national effort to reduce waiting lists and would thus let down the public whom they are trained to serve.

John Hutton: I have a great deal of sympathy with my hon. Friend's point. It is worth reminding hon. Members that the proposed contract will be good for patients and the NHS. That is not only my view, but that of the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox). The contract holds out the prospect of significant improvements for NHS consultants' terms and conditions of work, and I hope that we can take the matter forward positively.

Evan Harris: The impending rejection of the Government's new contract by current and future consultants is not because of money. Does the Minister accept that they are rejecting giving more power to the Secretary of State and managers, who would put political targets before clinical need? Are not junior doctors, who are currently exploited, rejecting a definition of a normal working week that includes working late in the evening and on Saturday and Sunday mornings?
	If the Minister wants more consultant time, why does not he insist that the NHS creates more consultant posts and allows those on non-consultant career grades, the majority of whom are from ethnic minorities and stuck in such posts, to apply to be consultants? They have the skills to increase NHS activity.

John Hutton: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is wrong in just about everything he has said. We are increasing the consultant work force in the NHS. When we came to office, there were 21,000 in England; there are now 26,000. We are taking a number of measures to improve the terms and conditions of all doctors in the NHS, but his position on all those issues is complete incomprehension of the need for reform. The need for reform here will be just as important on Friday—the day after the ballot result is announced—as it is today. There is a strong need to reform the consultants' contract. That is not only my view, but that of the BMA.

Dennis Skinner: Does the Minister agree that, more than 50 years ago, consultants played a part in holding up the reforms of the Minister of Health, Nye Bevan? It seems that they are still at it. It seems rather odd that everybody else in the hospital has to sing to the same tune, yet consultants, who are making money on the side, seem to wield tremendous power. I say all that against this background: I have to go and see one in a month. I hope that the Minister manages to tell them that it is time they played the game.

John Hutton: I have a great deal of sympathy with the points that my hon. Friend makes. I hope that the consultant who is seeing my hon. Friend voted yes to the new contract; otherwise, he might be in a bit of trouble.
	I say in all sincerity to my hon. Friend, whom I hold in the highest regard, that the point that he addressed is fundamental, and there will still be an issue of accountability in the NHS, not only for managers, but for senior doctors. Those arguments about accountability to the taxpayer and to patients and the wider community in which we all live will be just as pertinent the day after the BMA announces the ballot result on Thursday as they have been in the 50 years since the NHS was established.

Liam Fox: But if the reports referred to are correct and the consultant contract is rejected, who will be primarily to blame?

John Hutton: As I have said repeatedly, I will not speculate on the outcome of the ballot, but I would be interested to know whether the hon. Gentleman, whom I suspect hears the sound of a bandwagon rolling and now wants to get on board, has changed his view, which he expressed in June, that this is a good contract for the NHS.

Liam Fox: We are touchy today. Although I accept that there are positive aspects to the contract for doctors and for patients, if there is a rejection, it will be of the contract's culture, not its substance. Doctors fear far greater interference in their clinical work, which is hardly surprising, given the Government's target culture. Despite all the Secretary of State's rhetoric, he has tried to micromanage the NHS from Whitehall, which has resulted in ever more administration and red tape as well as a distortion of clinical priorities. The rejection of the contract and the chaos that that may bring will be a direct result of the Government's approach to running the NHS. Does the Minister accept that, ultimately, the buck therefore stops with him?

John Hutton: The hon. Gentleman, rather like the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), is wrong on all those issues and all those counts. Interestingly, it appears that it is now the policy of Her Majesty's Opposition to set themselves against any national target for the NHS. They have collective amnesia on the other side of the House, because only last summer the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) and his right hon. Friends were committing themselves to national waiting time targets across the NHS. What does he want?

North-West Public Health Observatory

Helen Jones: If he will make a statement on the work of the north-west public health observatory.

Hazel Blears: The north-west public health observatory is taking a lead role in the north-west region and nationally on important policy areas of communicable disease, health protection and drug misuse to provide intelligence to protect the public's health. Its success is reflected in a move from annual funding to a three-year funding programme.

Helen Jones: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. What she says about funding is good news, but what steps will she take to ensure that the work of the public health observatory is properly disseminated and that it informs the decisions of primary care and acute trusts, so that decisions on the provision and accessibility of health services are directed at those areas most in need?

Hazel Blears: My hon. Friend makes an important point. The north-west public health observatory has a link to the Department on communicable disease and drug misuse, so its information and evidence are fed through the system. There was an excellent example of that recently when the observatory was able to trace the people involved in a significant outbreak of syphilis in the Manchester area, and to carry out tests. As a result of the intelligence that it gained on the ground from that important project, it was able to inform our policies centrally on prevention and tracing.

Oliver Heald: Is not the Minister aware that the Government have been heavily criticised by their own adviser, Steve Jamieson, who has said that the Prime Minister and the Government delayed introducing the sexual health strategy because they were embarrassed about the high level of sexually transmitted disease? He said:
	Xwhile they were sitting on the strategy there were people out there who could not access services and were contracting sexually transmitted infections."
	While the Government were dithering over this issue for three years, how many people did the observatory monitor who needlessly fell ill or were denied treatment? Does the Minister agree that the dismantling of the Public Health Laboratory Service on top of all this will make matters worse?

Hazel Blears: The hon. Gentleman knows that the Government have introduced the first ever sexual health strategy, so we are taking the issue seriously. It is backed by additional funding of #47 million, and an extra #5 million this year for genito-urinary services. I have visited GU services in the past few weeks, and I know the pressure that they are under. They are having to treat many more people, which is why the Government have put their money where their mouth is and have established a strategy, with money to back up the action plan.

CT Scanners

Michael Jack: When he expects decisions to be reached on new computerised axial tomography scanner allocations.

Alan Milburn: Local consultations on the allocation of the next 50 CT scanners are well under way, and I expect decisions to be made before too long.

Michael Jack: In welcoming the Secretary of State's promise of a decision, may I remind him that a powerful case for Blackpool to have an additional CT scanner was made with all-party support in February? We were promised criteria for their allocation in the summer, but they did not appear. Now we are told that strategic health authorities were supposed to have made recommendations about the allocation of the scanners to his Department in September. May I press him to be more specific about when he expects that announcement to be made? Can he help Blackpool by telling us whether it is in with a chance?

Several hon. Members: rose—

Alan Milburn: I see the Blackpool mafia on both sides of the House rising to their feet. The Blackpool Victoria infirmary does a good job and has made an impressive case. Given that there have been gaps in CT scanner capacity, it is right that we match demand with supply. That decision is best made locally, so the strategic health authority in the area is considering a number of possible sites for additional scanners. I cannot say exactly what the decision will be for Blackpool, but its case will be fully taken into account. I hope that I can make final decisions in the next couple of months. We can make these investments precisely because we have raised the resources. We back those resources, but the question for the right hon. Gentleman is whether his party does.

Lindsay Hoyle: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the fact that the Government have ensured that there are more CT scanners throughout the country and that capacity is expanding. Would not we get better value if we could ensure that they were in use for longer hours and that there was a better choice for people who need them? That is important. What can he do to ensure that we get better value?

Alan Milburn: My hon. Friend makes an important point. We must plug the huge, historic gaps in capacity. By the end of this year, we expect that the number of CT scanners will have increased by more than 50 per cent. since 1997, and that the number of magnetic resonance imaging scanners will have increased by almost 100 per cent. That means that 28 per cent. of MRI scanners and 48 per cent. of CT scanners now working in the NHS are new and have been provided since January 2000. Communities up and down the country are benefiting from them, although we need to do more to plug gaps in capacity.
	Obviously, the equipment will work only if there are staff to operate it. As my hon. Friend knows, there is an acute shortage of radiologists and radiographers. That is why we are increasing the number of radiographer training places, which was cut in the past. It will take time to achieve what we want to achieve, but I want to record my thanks to radiologists, radiographers and other scanning department staff, who do an outstanding job in what are often difficult circumstances.

Paul Marsden: Does the Secretary of State believe that CT scanners and other diagnostic measures such as radiotherapy units are vital to the provision of NHS treatment? If so, why are so many being funded through the lottery and local charities?

Alan Milburn: I think that even the hon. Gentleman understands that most members of his community do not much care where the money comes from. What they care about is getting a CT scanner.

NHS Trust Mergers (Durham)

Kevan Jones: If he will make a statement on the merger of North Durham Health Care NHS Trust and South Durham Health Care NHS Trust.

John Hutton: My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), the Minister of State, Department of Health, approved the establishment of the County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS Trust from 1 October 2002. The merger will offer patients greater choice and faster access to specialist treatment at a wider range of hospitals.

Kevan Jones: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the main problems facing the trust is bed blocking at the new North Durham hospital? The solution clearly lies with a number of organisations—the primary care trusts, Durham county council, the district councils and the trust itself. Will he support an initiative from the county council to get all the stakeholders round the table to come up with such a solution?

John Hutton: I agree with my hon. Friend, and hope that he too will play a positive role in the process. I can tell him that Durham county council, the strategic health authority and the new acute trust are already trying to find a better way of tackling what I accept is a problem in his constituency.

Peter Lilley: Will the Minister warn the people of Durham that mergers of this sort are usually followed by proposals for mergers or closures of accident and emergency and acute hospitals? The merging of all the trusts in Hertfordshire was followed by proposals to close between half and three quarters of Hertfordshire's accident and emergency hospitals. Will he promise a national study of the alleged results of past mergers of this kind before any more are allowed to proceed?

John Hutton: I think that the right hon. Gentleman is describing what happened under the last Conservative Administration. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy), the Under-Secretary of State for Health, has said, for the first time for many years, bed numbers in the NHS are increasing. Under the Administration of whom the right hon. Gentleman was a prominent member, the number of beds fell by 60,000. A little more penitence from him might go a long way.

Gerry Steinberg: At a recent meeting between Durham Members and the county council, the social services department told us that it had not received money promised by the Government for the releasing of beds, and that the money had been retained by the primary care trusts. At Prime Minister's Question Time a while ago, the Prime Minister said that the money would release beds. Will the Minister's Department investigate, and find out exactly what happened to the money and whether it was spent on releasing beds?

John Hutton: I will certainly look into that. Durham county council received #1.8 million by way of a new special grant this year to help it to tackle problems relating to delayed discharge. We expect the money to be used to tackle that problem, and for no other purpose.

Kennet and North Wiltshire Primary Care Trust

James Gray: What the level is of indebtedness of the Kennet and North Wiltshire PCT.

Hazel Blears: Kennet and North Wiltshire primary care trust started the current financial year with a range of financial pressures, causing an underlying shortfall of #10.89 million. It received #3.3 million after applying to the NHS bank for support. The health authority will work with the trust to develop a three-year recovery plan to address the underlying shortfall.

James Gray: It is amazing how Labour Ministers manage to spin things to make even the worst possible news sound wonderful. There is an #11 million debt in respect of the PCT, and a further #22 million debt hangs over it as a result of the shambles at the Royal United hospital in Bath. I am meeting the Minister of State this afternoon to discuss a parallel crisis in mental health care funding in North Wiltshire, which has also resulted in a huge debt. What can the Minister possibly say to the people of Wiltshire, who face a deep and damaging crisis in every aspect of health provision in the county?

Hazel Blears: This is a serious situation, and clearly the primary care trust will not be left to face it on its own; it is a matter on which the whole health community should work together. For the first time ever, there will be a three-year allocation to enable planning over the longer term to meet the demands of the community. I have already told the hon. Gentleman that I am perfectly happy to meet him and his colleagues to discuss the situation. He will also be aware, however, that his health community has had a massive increase in expenditure in the past few years, and that the biggest ever investment in the NHS will take place over the next three years. If he has problems about funding, I must ask him seriously why his party is not prepared to match our commitment to increasing investment in the NHS.

Care Homes

Julian Lewis: If he will make a statement on the availability of care home places in the south-east.

Jacqui Smith: Department of Health figures show that, as of March 2001, there were 91,895 care home places in the south-east. Figures produced by the independent analysts Laing and Buisson suggested that occupancy levels in the southern home counties in March 2002 were 90.8 per cent. in residential homes, and 91.8 per cent. in nursing homes. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced to the House in July, the provision of an extra #1 billion a year in real terms for social services for older people by 2006 will ensure more support to help more people who need care in residential and nursing homes.

Julian Lewis: You would never guess from that answer, Mr. Speaker, that between April 1998 and April of this year, 916 care home places have gone in Hampshire alone—just under 10 per cent. of the total. Is that not due largely to the unrealistic demands put on care homes through the Government's legislation of 2000? Is not the fact that the Government are backtracking on that legislation an admission that they got it badly wrong?

Jacqui Smith: I will keep it snappy. We listened to the concerns of care home owners and we acted on them. The hon. Gentleman cannot complain about the support that this Government are putting into care homes: increases in fees, funded by extra investment that he and his party failed to support.

Fiona Mactaggart: There is a problem with getting GP cover for increasingly sick people in care homes in Slough, and persuading GPs to offer such cover without charging care homes substantial sums. Will the Minister encourage primary care trusts in areas where that problem exists to meet care homes to resource proper GP cover for care home residents?

Jacqui Smith: Yes, my hon. Friend makes an important point. Of course, people in care homes should have access to the general services of a GP in the same way as anybody else, but there may well be particular concerns in relation to care homes. My hon. Friend has assured me that we can consider this issue in relation to the contract, and her point about the role of PCTs in looking at the problems in particular localities is another important one, which we can consider.

Oliver Heald: The Minister may have acted, but does she not realise that she has acted far too late—two years too late—after 60,000 places have been lost in care homes? Has she seen the latest figures for emergency readmissions, which show that the number of patients aged over 75 who are readmitted within 28 days has risen to 8 per cent.? Does that not show that elderly patients—if they do have somewhere to go—are being discharged too early because so many other patients cannot leave hospital? They cannot leave because, as a result of this Government's action, no care home places are available. It takes something special to have not only a waiting list to get into hospital, but a waiting list to get out.

Jacqui Smith: This Government's additional investment of #300 million over the past two years has helped to ensure a reduction of more than 1,200 in the number of older people who are stuck in hospital, and who, rightly, are better off out of it.
	The hon. Gentleman has nowhere to go, however. Opposition Members complained about environmental standards, and the Government listened to the concerns expressed by those who run care homes. We acted responsibly but, in the end, capacity for the care of older people depends on investment. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State spelled out in July, the Government are willing to invest in choice and capacity for older people. That means that more care will be available for them in residential care homes and in their own homes. The hon. Gentleman opposes that investment. He has nowhere to go, and nothing to say.

Infection Control

Vincent Cable: If he will make a statement on the adequacy of infection control procedures in the NHS.

Hazel Blears: The Government take infection control in our hospitals very seriously. We have set standards to ensure that there is a managed environment that minimises the risk of infection to patients, staff and visitors. Recent analysis of hospitals' performance in that respect shows that there has been an improvement over the past two years, but more needs to be done and actions are being taken nationally, regionally and locally.

Vincent Cable: I hope that the Minister can explain an apparent contradiction in policy. When the Government are challenged about rising infection rates, especially the fiftyfold increase in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus over the past 10 years, they point to the clean hospitals programme. That is a key part of the response. Last week, however, a departmental spokesman denied that there was any scientific link between hygiene and MRSA. Which line is correct?

Hazel Blears: Research has shown that there is no direct correlation between cleanliness and MRSA. That is contrary to what many people would expect, but it is clear that there are links between good infection control and hygiene. A key part of the action that we are taking is to encourage simple, practical measures. They include disinfecting beds properly between patients, promoting more hand washing in hospitals and making sure that people use the alcohol gel where there are MRSA infections.
	The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) knows that MRSA is not a uniquely British problem; it is common throughout Europe and the world. The systems in this country are among the best in the world when it comes to collecting the data and taking practical action to reduce the incidence of MRSA in our hospitals. We have instituted the clean hospitals scheme at a cost of #62 million, and a #200 million scheme to improve the decontamination of instruments and equipment. They are helping reduce the incidence of these very serious infections.

Nick Palmer: Will my hon. Friend the Minister welcome the state-of-the-art marrow transplant unit to be established at Nottingham's City hospital? The unit will have a very high level of protection against infection. Does she agree that only sustained investment in the NHS over a period of years will resolve the problem, not a sustained investment in rhetoric?

Hazel Blears: My hon. Friend is right. Throughout the world, the incidence of infection will increase as more complex procedures are introduced and more vulnerable patients treated. As we get more successful at treating more vulnerable people, we must be extremely careful when it comes to monitoring infection rates. I am delighted to welcome the establishment of the unit in my hon. Friend's constituency, which, as he noted, will be state of the art. However, this is a long-term problem. It requires long-term solutions and a commitment to long-term investment. We are determined to make sure that that investment happens.

Michael Fabricant: I am delighted that the Minister has spoken about the need for hygiene and for hand washing, although she is doing no more than echo what Florence Nightingale said 160 years ago. However, she is wrong to say that the problem faces hospitals in countries around the world. Is she aware that the European anti-microbial survey found that people were more likely to catch MRSA and associated diseases in British hospitals than in those of any other European country?

Hazel Blears: The hon. Gentleman knows that this is a worldwide problem. The authorities in America are very worried about it, and recent estimates are that as many as 50,000 or 60,000 people there could die from MRSA infections. I am sure that he is aware that other European countries face problems similar to ours. However, we now have a mandatory system for recording the relevant data. That has not existed before. We want to get to the truth of the matter so that we can take appropriate action and do not have to work in the dark. For the first time, we have proper data and are taking action nationally, regionally, locally and at the level of health trusts. Some of the actions involved, such as promoting hand washing and better infection control and disinfection, are very simple, but we also want to spread good practice across the health service, in community settings as well as in hospitals. Unfortunately, MRSA is probably with us to stay, but good control can help to reduce the incidence of infection by between 15 and 30 per cent., and thereby make people's time in hospital a lot safer.

Children's Trusts

Hilton Dawson: If he will make a statement on the establishment of children's trusts.

Jacqui Smith: Children's trusts will provide an opportunity for delivering better services and outcomes for children and families. They will be based in local councils with power for the first time to commission health and social care. The first pilot sites will start from April 2003 and we will be seeking expressions of interest in the next few months.

Hilton Dawson: I thank my hon. Friend for that response and for the news about possibly the most hopeful development in children's services in 30 years. May I have a pilot project in my constituency? Such a development would be particularly relevant in north Lancashire, where we struggle with the archaic structures of county councils and district councils. People who work hard to deliver good services need extra support to enable them to provide joined-up services linking health, social care, education and the voluntary and community sectors. I can make no better recommendation for my constituents.

Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend is a very good campaigner for his constituency and also for the principle behind children's trusts. I know that he believes, as I do, that children who have been abused or neglected or who are disabled need a joined-up service. They do not need bureaucratic boundaries getting in the way of the provision of that service. I hear what he says about his constituency. He makes an important point about the need to ensure that we develop the pilots in a range of areas, including those with two-tier authorities like his. Although I cannot make him any promises today, I will certainly listen carefully to any proposals that come forward from his constituency and area.

Andrew Lansley: In establishing trusts and, I hope, managed networks for the provision of children's services, can the Minister tell the House when she will publish the Government's substantive response to the Kennedy report about the configuration of acute hospital services for children?

Jacqui Smith: We have published the response to the Kennedy report. We said that it raised considerable issues about acute hospital care and that that would be the first part of the children's national service framework. We are hoping to publish that first part of the national service framework later this year.

Autism

Stephen Ladyman: What progress has been made in implementing the national service framework for children in relation to autism.

David Lammy: The disabled children's external working group is developing draft standards and interventions that will help improve services and support for disabled children. One of the national service framework exemplars that we publish will be on services for children with autism.

Stephen Ladyman: The national service framework, using autism as an exemplar, has the potential to provide a sea change in the way in which autistic people and their carers are looked after, but the key will be to ensure that it is a genuine cross-departmental exercise and that the exemplar is followed in the field. How will my hon. Friend ensure that it is being implemented out there, where it matters?

David Lammy: My hon. Friend takes an active interest in autism as chair of the all-party group on autism. Francine Bates, chair of the external working group, is meeting him on 5 November to take these ideas forward and we will consider them in due course. Joint guidance has been issued for consultation by the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills to help families, children and carers affected by autism.

Henry Bellingham: Is the Minister aware that children on the autistic spectrum often need speech therapy and occupational therapy? A constituent whose child needs occupational therapy recently told me that the list in west Norfolk is running at 36 months and that the child has therefore been removed from the list. There is a big problem in some areas; it is not simply a question of resources but of long-term planning and of the Government emphasising recruitment. Will the Minister take this on board?

David Lammy: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The number of language therapists has increased from 4,870 in 1997 to 5,680 in 2001. He is right to say that we must continue to work hard in that area.

Iraq

Tam Dalyell: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 24, to debate an important matter that requires specific and urgent consideration, namely,
	Xthe statement of the Iraqi Foreign Minister at the weekend about weapons inspectors."
	This is against the background of much concern in the United States, not least from the American conference of Roman Catholic bishops who urged the President and members of Congress to step back from the brink of war and to work with other nations and the United Nations actively to pursue effective alternatives to war to address Iraq's threats.
	There are a number of questions that the House of Commons must address urgently.
	First, will Britain be, in a legal sense, in a state of war with Iraq if we join the US attack?
	Secondly, why did President Bush have to get a vote in Congress authorising the use of force, when the British Government have not indicated their intention of doing so?
	Thirdly, if British forces are engaged, will that be done under the royal prerogative, which requires no parliamentary authority?
	Fourthly, what will be the position of British citizens now living and working in Iraq? Will they be advised to leave the country before the attack or to stay and, if so, what protection can the Government give them?
	Fifthly, will British troops, if they are captured, be entitled to protection under the Geneva convention?
	Sixthly, will British troops be under the orders of American officers and will they be required to serve in an army of occupation?
	Seventhly, will the British Government be consulted on the date when hostilities begin and will they be a signatory of any agreement to bring the war to an end?
	Eighthly, what compensation will the British Government give British citizens who suffer financial loss as a result of war?
	Ninthly, will Iraqi citizens living in Britain be treated as enemy aliens and imprisoned, and under what statutory authority?
	Tenthly, what rights will Iraqi soldiers captured by British forces have, and will they qualify for the protection of the Geneva convention?
	Eleventhly, what will be the position, under military law, of members of the British armed forces who refuse to fight because they believe that a war waged against Iraq that has not been authorised by the United Nations could lead to their being charged at a war crimes tribunal under the International Criminal Court, which the British Government support?
	Twelfthly, how would the position of British troops charged with war crimes differ from that of American troops, given that the United States has declared itself exempt from any international criminal court?
	Thirteenthly, how would the British Government respond to a charge of war crimes of the kind brought under the Nuremberg court?
	Fourteenthly, have the Law Officers been consulted on these issues and will their report be published and laid before Parliament?
	In no way am I anti-American. I share a great great-grandmother with one of the American Presidents. I have many American friends, as do many people in the House. We are not anti-American, but we think that these questions should be urgently addressed.

Mr. Speaker: I have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said and I have to give him my decision without stating any reasons. I am afraid that I do not consider that the matter that he has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 24 and I cannot, therefore, submit the application to the House.

Alice Mahon: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Many of us are deeply concerned about the latest threats from Colin Powell and believe that they are evidence of the further intention and determination of the United States to start that sort of war. We think that it is time for the fancy footwork from those on our Front Bench to stop and for us to have a firm statement about exactly what our policy is on Iraq. I appeal to you, Mr. Speaker, as the protector of Back-Bench rights, to urge the Government at least to make a statement to the House.

Mr. Speaker: Ministers will have heard what the hon. Lady has said.

Air Weapons

Jonathan R Shaw: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Firearms Act 1968 to restrict the acquisition and possession of air weapons; and for connected purposes.
	All Members receive complaints about antisocial behaviour, which comes in a variety of guises. The consequences for victims will depend on the severity of the crime and how the individual overcomes the trauma, be that physical or emotional. Almost every year, Parliament approves a crime Bill, in the genuine belief that the provisions will protect the innocent, help the victims and deter and punish the perpetrators.
	Our constituents have a right to expect us continually to pursue the fight against crime, but they know that there is no magic wand and that some laws are more successful than others. Yet in our pursuit they expect us to consider not only new laws but existing laws, and whether they need revising in order to be relevant to our modern day. It is on that basis that I, together with colleagues from both sides of the House, believe that the time has come to take an important first step to tackle the airgun menace, and I am grateful to all the hon. Members who signed my early-day motion on that.
	My Bill seeks to amend the Firearms Act 1968, by raising the age for unsupervised possession and use of air weapons from 14 to 17 years. That would bring the legislation relating to air weapons into line with other gun control legislation. My Bill will not have an effect on youngsters under 17 using air weapons in registered clubs.
	The power of the modern air weapon means that it is used to kill, to maim and to cause serious injury to our constituents. The power of the modern air weapon means that it can kill, maim and cause serious injury to animals—domestic and wild.
	It is reasonable to ask whether raising the age to 17 for unsupervised use and possession will put a complete end to the misery caused by air weapon use. The answer is no, not a complete end, but it might help, perhaps considerably. That is enough in my book to meet the test that all proposed legislation must meet: XWill it work?"
	Every week, a local newspaper somewhere in the United Kingdom will carry a story about a person or animal being attacked, or being the victim of an air weapon. The effects range from a minor abrasion to death. Last year, I launched previous, related legislation, the Firearms (Amendment) Bill, and since then I have been inundated by letters from victims and from local newspapers—to which I am very grateful—that are running their own campaigns. The Police Federation has written to me to express its support for the proposals, and doctors also want further restrictions on air weapons. Animal welfare organisations, such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—to which I am grateful for helping me to prepare the Bill and providing me with research material—all want change. Why? Because of the costs incurred in time and money and, most important, in human and animal suffering.
	Air weapons offences are on the increase. In 1997 there were 7,506 offences; in 2001 there were 10,227. In the same period, the trends for slight and serious injury were on the increase. Those relate to the person. The RSPCA reports that tens of thousands of domestic and wild animals are attacked by air weapons every year; it advises me that its most recent survey among vets shows a further increase in such attacks.
	Why the age restriction? Home Office figures show that, overwhelmingly, the average age of conviction for air weapons offences in England and Wales is in the middle teen years. All too frequently, the hundreds of newspaper cuttings that I have been sent describe the perpetrators as teenagers. The many campaigns run by local newspapers deserve our praise, because they have been a considerable force in bringing to our attention the nature of these weapons and the effect that they are having on the communities that we represent.
	Air weapons are seen by many as toys. Perhaps that is not surprising, given that children as young as 14 are able to possess them. While in Blackpool this year, I saw a sign in a gun shop that apparently boasted that no licence was required for the deadly-looking weapon on display.
	Parliament needs to send a clear message to our constituents that we take this matter seriously, and the Bill would make a start. I should like to provide the House with some examples of the crimes committed with air weapons in our communities. Some are random victims of air weapon attacks, such as 15-year-old Tommy Morris from Abbey Wood in south-east London. He was out with a friend on his bike in the local park and felt a thud in his back, which resulted in breathing difficulty, and he was rushed to hospital. The pellet had punctured his lung, destroyed his gall bladder and ricocheted through his liver, ending up just a millimetre away from the main artery. Tommy was unable to have a liver transplant—the risk was too great—so now he lives with a pellet in his liver that could move at any time.
	Eleven-year-old Kirsty Hill from Portsmouth was shot in the face while playing with a friend and nearly lost an eye. In Bradford, two boys, aged 15 and 16, were seen hanging out of a bedroom window, firing indiscriminately at children while they played, which resulted in a 12-year-old's eye being shot out.
	A 15-year-old from Gateshead, Nicola Disten, lost one of her eyes when it was shot out by two teenage boys. Her local newspaper, the Evening Chronicle, collected some 18,000 signatures from people calling for stricter gun laws. Her injury is one of many incidents in the north-east that have been highlighted by the Evening Chronicle's campaign. In Lancaster, a 16-year-old was shot in the jaw and surgery was required to remove the pellet. In August this year, Teresa Brooks, a 36-year-old married woman from Hull, was shot dead by an air pistol.
	In every part of the country, there are scores of incidents where people are victims of airgun attacks, but as well as human suffering, thousand and thousands of animals are victims of air weapon attacks every year, and they are frequently used as target practice. The Cats Protection League estimates that some 10,000 cats are killed, maimed or injured every year. The RSPCA reports that swans are used as target practice. In Bolton, a postman came under attack himself when trying to protect three swans from an air weapon attack, and he and the swans ended up with severe injuries.
	The number of attacks always rises during school holidays, giving further weight to the argument to raise the age limit for possession by youngsters from 14 to 17, but as well as human and animal suffering there is concern about the cost to our public services. Research by doctors at St James's university hospital in Leeds found that one in 10 victims of air weapon attack had to be hospitalised.
	More than half the call-outs of some police armed response units are in response to incidents involving air weapons; as I have said, I am pleased to have received the Police Federation's support.
	The law has not kept pace with the increasingly powerful weapons that are causing misery and mayhem in our constituencies. It is simply not good enough for us to wring our hands and tell our constituents that nothing can be done. As I have said, my Bill is not a panacea, but it is an important first step to tackle the air weapon menace that is plaguing our communities, and I commend it to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Jonathan Shaw, Vernon Coaker, Mr. Chris Mullin, Ms Bridget Prentice, Ms Julia Drown, John Austin, Paul Holmes, Jeff Ennis, Michael Fabricant, Mr. Roger Gale, Derek Conway and Mr. David Amess.

Air Weapons

Jonathan Shaw accordingly presented a Bill to amend the Firearms Act 1968 to restrict the acquisition and possession of air weapons; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Thursday 7 November, and to be printed [Bill 198].

Speaker's Statement

Mr. Speaker: Before I call a Minister to move motion No. 2, it may be helpful to indicate to the House how the debate will proceed on the modernisation and procedure motions that are before us today. Assuming that the business of the House motion is agreed to, I propose to allow a general debate covering motions Nos. 3 to 13 together. At 10 pm, we will then go through the motions in order. On each motion, we will vote first on the amendments that I have selected, and then on the motion itself, amended or not as the case may be.
	I remind the House that the scope of debate on the business of the House motion is limited to the procedural arrangements for the main debate.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
	That, at this day's sitting, the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on any Motions in the name of Mr Robin Cook relating to Modernisation of the House of Commons, Parliamentary Questions, and Amendments to Standing Orders not later than Ten o'clock, and such Questions shall include the Questions on any Amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved; the Questions may be decided, though opposed, after the expiration of the time for opposed business and the Order of 28th June 2001 relating to deferred Divisions shall not apply to them.—[Jim Fitzpatrick.]

Modernisation of the House of Commons

Robin Cook: I beg to move,
	That this House approves the Second Report from the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons, and endorses its proposals, in particular for more effective law making by more routine publication of bills in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny, for consultation with Opposition parties on the broad shape of the legislative year and more flexibility in programming, for an annual House of Commons calendar which would allow honourable Members to plan work in their constituencies more effectively and provide sittings in September balanced by an earlier recess in July, for more effective use of the Chamber including more regular use of time limits on speeches, and a Parliament that is more accessible to the public that it serves.
	This is a Parliament with a long history stretching back over eight centuries. That history can be a strength of this place. Our very antiquity is one of the reasons for the legitimacy of this place in the nation's constitution. It can also be a trap, however, if we become too attached to our procedures because that is the way in which we have always done things, or if we resist change that is necessary to be representative of a rapidly changing society outside.
	The day of our debate sees publication of a poll that underlines the challenge facing the House if it is to retain public respect. Most of the public believe that we are not effective at our job. A majority believe that we are
	Xold fashioned and out of date",
	and that majority has got bigger over the past year. The best case for modernisation is that this House will lose its authority if it is seen by the nation to be out of date.

Nick Hawkins: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Robin Cook: I have just begun. I will, of course, give way to hon. Members as I proceed with my speech, and I am conscious that many Members will wish to intervene. It might be helpful if I am allowed to proceed a little further, and the hon. Gentleman can intervene at the appropriate moment in the speech, in which I will cover several different issues.
	First, however, I want to say that the sole purpose of the measures before the House tonight is to produce a more effective Parliament. Since the publication of my memorandum on modernisation a year ago, I have rejected the notion that there is some kind of conflict between Government and the House of Commons on the need for an effective Parliament. Good scrutiny makes for good government

Eric Forth: indicated assent.

Robin Cook: I am glad that on at least one point I carry the right hon. Gentleman with me. I live in hope.
	At the heart of the package, therefore, are a number of proposals to improve scrutiny. I want to start with the measures to make Question Time more relevant and more topical. I congratulate the members of the Procedure Committee, and particularly its Chairman, the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), on a thorough investigation and a radical set of proposals, nearly all of which have been accepted by the Government—[Laughter.] The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) laughs at that point. May I commend to him the fascinating historical account of Question Time at the opening of the Procedure Committee report? I was intrigued to note from that account that in 1991 the Conservative Government rejected the shorter notice for Question Time that this Government are accepting. I hope, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman will spare us any extravagant claims about Conservative commitment to parliamentary scrutiny, which was never borne out when the Conservative party was in office.
	We welcome the proposal for a radical reduction in the period of notice for oral questions. The present period of notice is a clear fortnight, which is a ludicrously long period. Events in the real world have a tendency to move faster than the leisurely pace of our Standing Orders. The Standing Order before us today cuts the period of notice dramatically from 10 sitting days to three sitting days.
	The Government also accept the recommendation for electronic tabling of questions. Traditionalists will be relieved to hear that they can continue to table questions with a pencil and a buff form. However, the Standing Order gives authority to Mr. Speaker to introduce electronic tabling for those Members who wish to use modern information technology, and who will welcome the convenience of being able to table questions direct from their constituency or while on parliamentary delegations. No business starting out today would adopt our present manual procedures, which are more in keeping with the period architecture of this Palace than the high-tech economy in which our constituents work.

Nick Hawkins: Does the right hon. Gentleman not share my concern that the opportunity for Members to table questions from their constituencies will simply lead to many Labour Members failing to attend the Chamber at all? They are more interested in being absentee MPs than in doing the job of parliamentary scrutiny here.

Robin Cook: I only have to look around the Chamber to be encouraged by the fact that my hon. Friends are here to take a full part in the debate. The hon. Gentleman makes an unfair and unreasonable slur on the commitment of my colleagues. One reason why there is a majority among Labour Members in favour of earlier sitting hours is the fact that we are full-time professional MPs who are in the precincts in the morning anyway.

Shona McIsaac: rose—

Simon Thomas: rose—

Robin Cook: The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) has started something. I give way to my hon. Friend.

Shona McIsaac: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, of the 146 Members who vote in more than 80 per cent. of Divisions, 134 are Labour Members and that only six are Conservatives? Does that not show that we on the Labour Benches take parliamentary scrutiny seriously? Of those Members, 34 are Labour women.

Robin Cook: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for quoting figures that were, of course, on the tip of my tongue. They demonstrate beyond argument Labour Members' commitment to making this an effective Chamber.

Simon Thomas: I very much welcome the right hon. Gentleman's comments about the tabling of questions and give the proposals my full support. However, will he explain why an extra day has been allowed for the Wales Office? Has he seen its postbag since devolution was introduced? It has diminished considerably, so why should an extra day be allowed for the territorial offices? Should not the arrangements be the same as for other Departments?

Robin Cook: I warmly support devolution and I rather thought that the hon. Gentleman's party did too. However, the consequence of devolution is that the execution of policy and, indeed, decisions on policy are now taken in Edinburgh, Cardiff and, when the Northern Ireland Assembly is restored, Belfast. The territorial offices have very small staffs and depend on consultation with the devolved bodies for consultation on answers. I would have thought that he would want us to introduce a change that would enable those Departments to consult the devolved bodies before coming to Parliament with an answer. That is why they will have an additional day in which to prepare the answers.
	Before leaving the issue of electronic tabling, I wish to point out that we attach great importance to the principle that any question tabled in the British Parliament must be put down by an elected Member. It is important that we guard against parliamentary questions being initiated by staff without the approval of a Member. We will therefore seek a robust system of authentication that will show that the Member concerned has given specific approval to the question. We fully agree with the Procedure Committee that Mr. Speaker should keep the new system under review and be ready to intervene if there is evidence that it produces a sharp increase in the total volume of questions, as that might indicate abuse.
	At the request of the Table Office, the new procedures for questions will not come into effect until January so that thorough preparations can be made. Before I turn from the Procedure Committee's report on questions, I hope that I will carry the whole House with me in recording our appreciation of the Clerks in the Table Office who always work under pressure and in circumstances that, on occasions, require a fine line in diplomacy.

Angela Browning: On a point of clarification, is it the right hon. Gentleman's intention to allow encrypted signatures in the tabling of questions?

Robin Cook: These are matters for the House authorities, whom we will consult. Indeed, we have offered them the services of the e-Envoy so that we introduce—[Interruption.] I am not sure what the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst finds objectionable in that. The e-Envoy has a large, well-staffed and well-resourced office that contains expertise on electronic operations in government. Surely it is right for the Government to make that expertise available to the House to make sure that we get a robust system of authentication.

Andrew MacKay: I am sure the Leader of the House carries us all with him when he proposes to reduce the length of time for tabling oral questions from 14 days to three. That would obviously improve scrutiny. In the same mode, I assume he agrees with my hon. Friend, whose constituency I cannot remember—[Hon. Members: XMacclesfield."] How could I forget? I assume the right hon. Gentleman agrees with my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, and supports the essential amendment on topical questions.

Robin Cook: I suspect that I am slightly more familiar with the report and the hon. Member for Macclesfield than the right hon. Gentleman appears to be.
	By accepting a dramatic reduction in the period of notice to three days, we expect Question Time to be more topical in general. If an urgent question needs to be addressed by someone other than the Department that is answering questions, it is open to the Speaker to accept a private notice question, which we propose should be renamed urgent question so that it is intelligible to the wider public.

Bill Wiggin: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Robin Cook: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I must make progress.
	I want to mention one other aspect of questions. Another improvement to scrutiny will come from the proposal by the Modernisation Committee to introduce a question session on cross-cutting issues. Increasingly, Whitehall Departments are adopting a cross-cutting approach. If Westminster wishes to provide effective monitoring, we must also adopt new forms of scrutiny to match those developments. If the House approves the package tonight, we will consult the Chairman of Ways and Means on the best way to introduce such sessions in Westminster Hall. I would envisage the first such question session to be on youth policy, to a team of Ministers from the Home Office, the Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Health.
	Better scrutiny is also why I believe that the Commons should be prepared to return as a matter of routine for September sittings. It is not healthy for the elected representatives of the British people to be absent for three months at a stretch. Too much happens while we are away, and too many decisions necessarily have to be taken by Government in our absence, for which there is no opportunity for Ministers to give an account to the Commons.
	I was struck at the last two business questions by the number of hon. Members who demanded a statement on events that took place during the recess. If we had routine September sittings, there would have been statements on many of those issues. I am confident, for instance, that the House would have heard, and would have welcomed, a major statement on the outcome of the important Johannesburg summit on sustainable development. Recent experience is that we have to make emergency arrangements to come back in September anyway. If every Member who demanded the recall of Parliament some time this summer votes for September sittings, I am confident of a comfortable majority.
	I stress that this is not a proposition covertly to cheat Members out of the total length of their summer recess. The deal is that the House will rise two weeks earlier in July, which will be for the convenience of those Members with children at schools that go back in August. In return, Members will be expected to come back for two weeks in September. I understand the concerns of those Members with young children who wish to be at home when the children go back to school in the first week of September. In the event of the House agreeing to September sittings, I propose that we return in the second week of September.

Eric Forth: Will the Leader of the House give way?

Robin Cook: Of course. I could not resist giving way to the right hon. Gentleman.

Eric Forth: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman has not committed an inadvertent slip of the tongue, because he never does. We were led to believe that the House would sit for three weeks in September, which we fully and enthusiastically support. Has that mysteriously slipped back to two weeks in September, and if so, why?

Robin Cook: There is no sudden change. On the contrary, if the right hon. Gentleman looks at the report he will see that we discussed the possibility of two or three weeks. I have announced that we will return for two weeks in the coming year. We are open to consultation and have made it clear in the report that we will consult. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to press us to meet in the first week of September, we will listen to those representations, but I think he will find them at variance with the wishes of many hon. Members, especially those with young children who attend schools that start in that week. It is only reasonable that we take account of the pressures on them.
	I have stressed that the package will improve Parliament's ability to question Ministers and to scrutinise Government policy. The other major role of this Chamber is to scrutinise and test Government legislation. The package of measures before the House makes a number of proposals to improve the scrutiny of Government Bills. The first of these is the recommendation in the resolution before the House that there should be more routine publication of draft Bills for pre-legislative scrutiny. If we want better laws, Parliament should be consulted before the texts are set in stone. Pre-legislative scrutiny can be carried out through Select Committees or through Joint Committees of both Houses. Either way it gives the MPs who are most specialised in the subject the opportunity to comment on the draft and to explore any problems in it with Ministers.
	The reality is that by the time we reach the Second Reading of a Bill, battle lines have been drawn up on party lines. If the House wants to influence the shape of legislation, it has to get in on the act when those Bills are still in draft. The key to more effective scrutiny of official Bills is to provide more time for their proceedings through Parliament. I readily admit to the House that, as Leader of the House, I would like Bills to lie for a longer period before Parliament. I am sorry that only one Bill this Session has had enough time to be committed to a Special Standing Committee with the power to call witnesses.
	The reason that I am compelled to hurry Bills through the House is the convention that any Bill that is not completed by the end of the Session faces sudden death. As far as we can discover, no other Parliament in the democratic world has such an eccentric rule. Our constituents imagine that they have elected us for a four or five-year term, and most of them would be surprised to hear that in truth they have elected us for a succession of four single years.
	The official Opposition cannot have it both ways. Of course I understand that they will try to have it both ways, but they cannot really hope to have it both ways and keep a straight face at the same time.

Eric Forth: Just watch.

Robin Cook: I have to tell the right hon. Gentleman that he is very bad at keeping a straight face, which makes proceedings very entertaining.
	The Opposition cannot demand more time for Bills and simultaneously insist that every Bill drives into a brick wall at the end of the Session. In the last Parliament, the Conservative party commission, chaired by the distinguished constitutional expert, Lord Norton, came down in favour of carry-over. In its report to the last leader of the Conservative Party it recommended:
	XWe believe carry-over should be the norm, not the exception. This will permit more structured scrutiny and more efficient distribution of the parliamentary workload."
	If the right hon. Gentleman proposes to treat us to a display of indignation at the effrontery of the Modernisation Committee in recommending carry-over, perhaps he could also explain why his party's commission on the same topic came to the same conclusion.
	I accept the Modernisation Committee's recommendation that if carry-over is adopted by the House, the longer timetable that it will permit should be used by the Government to provide more flexibility in the programming of Bills. I ask the official Opposition if they will accept the parallel recommendation: that if the Government demonstrate such flexibility, the Opposition should be willing to engage constructively in agreeing to programming motions.

Kenneth Clarke: May I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I am not acting in collusion with my Front-Bench colleagues? He knows that I am concerned about this issue, and it is a little disingenuous to suggest that the arrangement is being made only to give us more time to discuss legislation in the House.
	Does the Leader of the House agree that the main constraint on the quantity of legislation at the moment is not the time available in the House of Commons but the time available in the House of Lords before Parliament is prorogued? Every year, the Leader of the House has to tell colleagues to turn away Bills because he cannot get them through the House of Lords, where he cannot programme legislation, before the end of the Session. Does he also agree that the other place is at its most powerful at the end of the Session when Prorogation is approaching and the Government are given the choice, at least in theory, of losing their Bill or making modest concessions on the most important amendments? This disingenuous offering of more time will provide the opportunity, in a few years, to produce a conveyor belt of legislation through the House and greatly reduce the power of the House of Lords, sometimes assisted by this House, to modify Bills at the end of the Session.

Robin Cook: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for clarifying that he is not acting in collusion with his Front Benchers, even though I sometimes think that they could do with his collusion—they might wish to consider that.
	The Modernisation Committee's report is clear about carry-over. It states explicitly that the argument for carry-over is not to provide opportunity for more legislation, but to provide more time for current legislation. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman wants to rest on the House of Lords—I anticipate from his comments that he has some respect for that House—he should reflect on this point. Within the past year, the House of Lords has adopted proposals for carry-over of legislation. If the Lords can adopt such proposals, surely we in the Commons should not be left behind as the other House modernises its procedures faster than we do.

Alan Beith: Will the Leader of the House confirm that, in the case of any individual Bill, carry-over could not take place unless the Lords agreed to it?

Robin Cook: We can carry over a Bill for our House, but we cannot do so once it has been through both Houses. I stress that under the Standing Order we are proposing, a Bill can be carried over only from one Session to the next, that it cannot thereafter be carried over, and that there will be a separate opportunity for the House to reconsider the matter if the Bill remains before Parliament for more than 12 months.

Nicholas Winterton: What would be the extent of consultation with Her Majesty's official Opposition and other Opposition parties prior to the Government deciding to carry over a Bill?

Robin Cook: The hon. Gentleman highlights an important part of the motion before the House. As he will be aware, in the Modernisation Committee report we have committed ourselves to consultation with the other parties in the House—both the official Opposition and the other parties—on the broad shape of the legislative year, including consultation on which Bills might be introduced in draft, what the broad order of Bills coming before the House might be, whether a Bill begins in the Lords or in the Commons, and which Bills might prove to be appropriate for carry-over. That is wide-ranging consultation—much wider than any collective consultation that has previously been attempted in this House—and I hope that it will assist in developing consensus on the shape of the parliamentary year.

Patrick McLoughlin: Will the Leader of the House confirm that nothing currently prevents pre-legislative scrutiny, and that none of his proposals on carry-over adds anything to pre-legislative scrutiny? If the Government were serious, they could introduce pre-legislative scrutiny without making any of the changes that are proposed today.

Robin Cook: There are before us no Standing Orders on pre-legislative scrutiny, but there is a motion, the contents of which would ensure that there was a mandate from the House for those matters in respect of which there is no requirement for a change of Standing Order. That is why the motion deals with several issues, such as September sittings, for which no change of Standing Order is required. We could indeed call September sittings without a Standing Order, but we want a mandate from the House. I would find it helpful to have a mandate from the House with a clear instruction that hon. Members want to see more Bills in draft, and that is why I hope that the House will support it.

Gerald Kaufman: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Robin Cook: Of course I will give way to my right hon. Friend, but then—if the House will indulge me—I should like to go back to making a speech.

Gerald Kaufman: Consequent on his response to the intervention by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), will my right hon. Friend clarify the implications of carry-over in relation to the House of Lords? It is an attraction to me, and perhaps to other Labour Members, that the provision on carry-over could mean that—to pluck an example out of the air—a Bill to ban hunting with dogs would be sure to pass through the House of Commons; but if the House of Lords were not to carry over in that Chamber, it might provide an opportunity for the Lords to find another way of blocking the will of the Commons.

Robin Cook: My experience of the hunting issue is that offering any comment on it will not assist me in building a consensus on the proposals that I am putting to the House. However, we in the Commons could carry over Bills that started here. In effect, that really means that carry-over will be relevant to Bills introduced late in the Session, say after Easter. I do not anticipate the Bill to which my right hon. Friend refers being one of those that will wait until Easter. I suspect that I shall be hearing from him regularly during business statements if it is not in this place before Easter.
	I shall continue with my argument. I was about to say that there are two distinct parts to the job of a Member. So far, I have dealt with our role of providing scrutiny at Westminster. The other equally important task is our representative function in our constituencies. The two complement each other. It is an immense strength of this place that Members can bring to it their direct contact with the opinions and the interests of the communities that they represent, among whom most of them live, and all of them work. The package before the House will help colleagues to be more effective in their work for their constituencies. The motion provides a mandate for an annual calendar of the sitting dates and the recess dates for Parliament for a year ahead. It will help Members immensely to make more effective use of their time in their constituencies if they can plan their engagements a year ahead.
	I have been in the House for almost 30 years without ever being able to plan from one recess to the next when I can count on being away from Westminster. The motion will enable Members to make sensible arrangements more than two months ahead. If the House carries the motion, it will be my intention to announce in the business statement on Thursday the provisional dates of recesses up to October next year.

Michael Fabricant: Outrageous.

Robin Cook: I rather think that that would be welcome to many Members. I do not know what is outrageous about it. If the hon. Gentleman really objects, I shall try to make an exception for his constituency.

Michael Fabricant: Does the right hon. Gentleman say that if the motion is not passed, he will not give out the information at business questions? Is he saying that the information is available to him now but he will not divulge it if the motion is not passed, knowing full well that he could do so even if the motion is not passed tonight?

Robin Cook: I must correct the hon. Gentleman. I am merely the servant of the House. I cannot possibly proceed with a course of action that the House has just rejected. If the House votes down the motion, it would not expect me to ignore its view on the matter.
	I say to the hon. Gentleman and to all Opposition Members that I should underline Xprovisional". It will be our intention to stick to the dates, but our success in doing so must depend on progress. There will be an obligation also on the Opposition to make it possible for the House to rise on the announced dates.
	Members' constituency work will also benefit from the commitment to an additional constituency week to be added to either the Easter or the Whitsun recess.

Lynne Jones: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Robin Cook: I will finish this point.
	As a result of a holiday period, there is a limit to the number of meetings that can be undertaken with constituency businesses during these holiday periods. An additional week will enable Members to be in their constituency for a full working week.

Lynne Jones: Will my right hon. Friend ensure that parliamentary recesses coincide, as far as is possible, with school holidays, so that Members can be working in their constituencies at the same time as their children may be off school?

Robin Cook: I will obviously seek to do so. I anticipate that consultation with the other parties will reinforce that message. However, I cannot guarantee that it will always be the case. The important point of constituency weeks is that they should be spent in the constituency.
	We recall that the Leader of the Opposition, to the entertainment of my right hon. and hon. Friends, has called on all Conservative Members to spend a week with the vulnerable in their constituencies. I am not sure whether the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst has been able to find time for his week with the vulnerable in Bromley and Chislehurst. I hope that he will find my proposal useful to him in seeking out the vulnerable in his constituency.
	The earlier sitting hours on Thursday have assisted Members in their constituency duties by enabling most Members to return to their constituencies that same evening. We propose one adjustment to the hours on Thursday. We recommend that the House should rise one hour earlier at 6 pm, which would make it easier for many hon. Members from distant constituencies to travel back that same evening.
	That naturally brings me to the interesting issue of the sitting hours on Tuesday and Wednesday, on which there are divided views on both sides of the Chamber. From many conversations over the past six months, I know that the only comment on the issue on which I can carry the whole House with me is that there is no prospect of consensus. I put the matter before the House in order that hon. Members can resolve it themselves. The Standing Order is a temporary one that will automatically lapse at the end of this Parliament if there is no positive decision to make it permanent. If it is carried tonight, it will come into effect from January.
	On the Labour Benches, this will be a free vote. I am delighted to inform Conservative Members that twice when I have asked the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst whether he will permit a free vote, he has nodded in assent. I invite him to put that commitment on the record when he speaks, so that the quarter of Conservative Members who have expressed support for earlier sittings will be free to follow their own judgment.
	There is nothing hallowed about our sitting hours. Our predecessors changed the sitting hours many times in response to changing social circumstances. The right hon. Gentleman might want to reflect that it was customary for the House to sit in the mornings and afternoons until the 19th century. It was only the invention of gas lighting that brought about what we now think of as the traditional hours of the House. Perhaps it might help him to come to terms with earlier sittings if he were to think of them not as modernisation, but as a reversion to tradition.

Eric Forth: indicated assent.

Robin Cook: I am glad to have carried the right hon. Gentleman with me on that point.
	The present late start in the day dates from an era when MPs were unpaid. The hours were convenient for MPs who could do a day's work in the law courts or the City and still be at the House in time for the main debate. Today, the vast majority of MPs, certainly on the Labour Benches, are full-time professionals. We are paid enough by our constituents for them to expect us to work full-time. Most MPs are now on the precincts in the morning and there is no reason why our sitting hours should not change to reflect that reality.

Alice Mahon: I have read the Modernisation Committee reports very carefully and I cannot find any reference to consultation with the staff, who would undoubtedly be affected by changes in sitting hours, or with their trade unions. If I have missed such a reference, will my right hon. Friend point it out?

Robin Cook: My hon. Friend raises a very important and fair issue. Indeed, the House of Commons Commission discussed it last week. If the Chairman of the Finance and Services Committee catches your eye, Mr. Speaker, he will wish to address the issue. He will be able to assure the House that the Commission has given an undertaking that there will be consultation with the staff on how we go about the changes and that we will want to ensure that no member of staff is disadvantaged.
	I want the House to be a responsible employer. Personally, I do not take pride as an employer in hours that require many members of staff to be here late at night and some of them to be here for a number of hours after we have gone home in order that they may complete the day's business.

Stuart Bell: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for mentioning me in dispatches. In the event that I do not catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, may I assure him and the House that the prospects for the staff are of the utmost concern not only to the Commission, but to Members of the House overall? I hope to make a very important contribution on their behalf if I do indeed catch your eye.

Robin Cook: I think that that was the most elegant note to the Speaker that I have ever heard, but in the event of its being unsuccessful, my hon. Friend has been able to put his very important point on the record.

Patrick Cormack: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Robin Cook: We are now hearing from the entire Commission. Of course I shall give way.

Patrick Cormack: I speak as one who also hopes to make an important contribution to the debate. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that, although the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) certainly articulates the unanimity of the Commission in wishing to protect the interests of the staff, there is real division in the Commission, as elsewhere, about what best protects those interests?

Robin Cook: I fully understand that the hon. Gentleman has views on the matter, and I do not expect to find him in my Lobby at the end of today. It is fair to say that the Commission is divided, and I do not believe that I represented it as reaching a common position on the hours. However, we have a common position that if the House votes for change, we must ensure that our staff are consulted and not disadvantaged.
	The most important consideration on sitting hours must be what will make the House most effective. It cannot be most effective for Parliament to make no use of Tuesday or Wednesday mornings.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Robin Cook: Let me continue a little further. Under current arrangements, exchanges in Parliament on major policy take place in the afternoon. We are all professional communicators; no one in the Chamber would plan a press conference for 4 pm. If we are serious about the elected Parliament of the people setting the agenda for public debate, we need to start earlier in the day so that questions, statements and opening speeches are made in the middle of the day rather than when many of our constituents approach the end of their working day.
	Every week, I field complaints from the Opposition that the broadcasting media have speculated about the content of a forthcoming statement in the lunchtime bulletins. I agree that Parliament should be the first to hear policy announcements. Such announcements should be made to Parliament at a time when the lunchtime bulletins can report what has been said rather than speculating about what might be said.

Lindsay Hoyle: My right hon. Friend's point is interesting. However, does it mean that we might first hear announcements on breakfast television?

Robin Cook: My hon. Friend makes a fair point, and I join him in deprecating any early release of information. [Interruption.] I have done that repeatedly. The earlier statements are made, the better the chance of ensuring that they are rightly heard first in the Chamber.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Julian Brazier: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Robin Cook: I shall give way first to the hon. Gentleman to show fairness to both sides.

Julian Brazier: The Leader of the House makes a strong point, but not in favour of the proposal on the Order Paper. Surely the matter would best be tackled through morning sittings rather than starting at 11.30 am, as on Thursdays, and having announcements during the lunch break when most of the press are having lunch.

Robin Cook: I am deeply distressed by the suggestion that my proposal might interrupt press lunches. Given that weighty argument, I shall reflect on whether I should proceed with it. Of course, the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to vote for a 9.30 am start, which the Conservative amendment proposes. I regret that there are practical problems with that, not least for the Speaker's team, which must reach a view about the procedural matters on which they may have to rule when the House sits. I cannot therefore commend the amendment to my colleagues. That is perhaps a pity for the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, because I doubt whether he will receive much support for the proposal.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: In view of my right hon. Friend's points, I want to ask him about two matters. First, will he assure us that Ministers will not make all their public statements before 9 am on the various media? My second point relates to my right hon. Friend's proposal about Ministers' ability to make written statements, which deprives us of the right to question them. Will he assure us that Ministers will not make public statements on the media and then put their statements to the House of Commons in writing?

Robin Cook: I disagree with my hon. Friend's last point. Our proposal on written statements accepts one of the Procedure Committee's recommendations. If she examines its report, she will read that the Committee commends the proposal because it makes such statements more transparent and more convenient for hon. Members. Every week, several written statements are published in Hansard. They are currently disguised as responses to planted questions. Frankly, it is much more open, grown-up, dignified and transparent to be open about their being written statements, and separately identifying them in Hansard, where we could all read them the following day. I regard that as progress.

Jim Sheridan: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Robin Cook: I must make some progress, but I am sure that there will be an opportunity to intervene later.
	I understand that many Members will want to continue to work in the precincts in the evenings, long after the House has risen. For their benefit, the Modernisation Committee has recommended that the Library, the Dining Room and other refreshment facilities should continue to be available in the evenings, as at present. I speak as one who once was locked in the Library by a security guard who assumed that all sane Members had gone to bed and was startled to be phoned up by a Member he had taken prisoner. I would not wish any colleague to be locked out of the Library or, for that matter, locked in.
	The Modernisation Committee has also recommended that Committees should not meet during Question Time or the first statement. The Standing Order before the House would prevent Standing Committees from meeting between 11.30 am and 2 pm while the House is sitting. However, I want to stress, as there appears to have been some misapprehension on this point, that there is no bar in the proposed Standing Order on when Select Committees may meet. That will remain entirely a matter for the members of those Select Committees. They could, if they wanted, meet during Prime Minister's Question Time, although I would not recommend that they miss such entertaining exchanges.
	In practice, the majority of Select Committees already meet during sitting hours of the Chamber. Last week, 20 Select Committee meetings were held while the House was sitting, most at a time that would have prevented the members from hearing any statement in the House. I believe that the new hours will be for the convenience of the members of those Committees, because they may use any part of the afternoon after 2 pm, secure in the knowledge that they will also have been able to attend Question Time and the first statement of the day.
	I understand and sympathise with the concern of Members that the new sitting hours should not result in restricted access for the public. The Modernisation Committee wants more, not less, access for the public. We do not believe that the Chamber should be shut to the visiting public while we are sitting. That is why we have recommended that the line of route should be adapted so that it can operate while the House is sitting as well as when we are absent. Other Parliaments successfully provide glass-fronted galleries, which enable conducted groups to see the Chamber at work and to listen to guides or MPs without disrupting proceedings. Planning for such an innovation is in hand. Seeing the House while it is sitting, rather than an empty Chamber, will be of much greater educational value to the public and to school children.

Patrick McLoughlin: The right hon. Gentleman's motion, if the House passes it, will introduce these changes in January. When will the procedures to allow visitors to view the Chamber come into operation? Obviously, there will be a long delay. When does he expect a glass-fronted gallery to be built so that visitors can see the Chamber?

Robin Cook: The hon. Gentleman is correct that it will take time to put the changes in place—I would not deny that—but planning has begun, and he is aware of some of the discussions that are taking place. I hope that we will see progress during next year.

Lynne Jones: rose—

Ian Lucas: rose—

Robin Cook: I have already given way to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones), so I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas).

Ian Lucas: A great advantage of the current Tuesday and Thursday sitting hours is that people from constituencies such as Wrexham can travel down the same day, see the House before it sits, visit stunning parts of the House that I was not aware of before I became a Member, such as the other place and the Robing Room, and then see the House at work at a later hour. My concern about the proposals for Tuesdays and Wednesdays is that all those people who live outside the metropolitan area will have that ability removed from them.

Robin Cook: I am well aware of the immense attraction of this place as somewhere to visit. Indeed, visitor numbers have increased with each passing year, and I believe that they can continue to do so. I would have thought that the ability to take constituents round the Chamber while we are sitting in circumstances in which what is happening may be explained to them has serious attractions for my hon. Friend. After all, we want this place to be valued not as a piece of architecture or as a place with an interesting museum history, but as the beating heart of a working democratic constitution.

Patrick Cormack: rose—

Robin Cook: The hon. Gentleman has done more to cherish this place as a museum than any other, so I certainly give way to him.

Patrick Cormack: Parties of visitors may be taken round when the House is sitting, but whatever glass menagerie is put up, it will not be possible to take them into the Division Lobby or through the Members' Lobby in the same numbers as now, and the present line of route will have to be changed considerably. As the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) said, if the House of Lords sits at similar hours, parties would not be able to go into the Robing Room and other such places.

Robin Cook: The House of Lords will have to make its own decision. I believe that there are many ways in which we can make a visit to the House more meaningful and more educational. It is extraordinary that we still have no interpretative visitor centre for people who come here, and one of our key proposals is to ensure that we provide such a service.

Richard Younger-Ross: rose—

Robin Cook: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I must make progress.
	We should not be frightened from change by being apologetic about the hours we work. The British Parliament sits on more days than any of the major European Parliaments. Typically, we sit for 150 days each year compared with an average across Europe of about 100 days. We sit longer than any of the Parliaments in the major commonwealth countries. Whatever the sitting hours of the Chamber, most Members of the House will continue to put in 60 hours of work in most weeks.
	For me, the important question is why the Commons should not sit in the morning. I attach much more importance to that question than to the question of when we stop in the evening. I do not think it unreasonable that MPs should be free to leave the building, if they wish, around 7.30 pm after voting. We are all busy people, and most of us will be back at our desks early the next morning. Against that background, stopping at 7.30 pm can hardly be regarded as some kind of half day.
	We should not kid ourselves that the public respect us for our commitment to public service when we stay up well into the night. On the contrary, they often think that it is daft. They see it as further proof that politicians live in a world of their own, and certainly are not representative of normal people.
	In its statement of policy, the Conservative party states:
	XWe see no reason why the hours of the House should not more closely resemble the normal hours that most people work."
	I warmly welcome that outbreak of robust common sense, but it will read rather oddly if the majority of Conservative MPs vote to keep our present abnormal hours. Perhaps they should listen to the views of Conservative voters. Today's poll found that, by a thumping majority of nine to one, voters think that Parliament should sit for the hours that we have proposed. Even among Conservative voters, support for stopping in the evening at 7 pm ran at more than 80 per cent.
	The final verdict on the reforms must rest with the public who sent us here. There cannot be a responsible Member of the House who is not concerned about the decline in public respect and esteem for Parliament. At the last election, three out of five voters under 35 failed to vote for any Member in this Chamber. Unless we increase the voting habit of that generation as it grows older, we will be faced with a long-term challenge to the legitimacy of the House.
	Many different issues must be tackled if we are to restore faith in party politics as relevant to people's lives. The media could assist by factual reporting of the serious substance of our debates rather than portraying politics as a celebrity-driven soap opera. However, we need to accept responsibility ourselves. Part of the difficulty in engaging those younger voters is that they see our procedures as quaint, our lack of new technology as out of touch, and our working conditions as eccentric. The package before the House will make the Chamber more effective at scrutiny, our proceedings more relevant, and our working conditions more normal.
	Of course I recognise that all Members have a deep affection for this place. It is because of that genuine affection for the traditions of the Commons that some Members find it difficult to give up the way in which we have always done business. Those of us who support change do so because of our love of this place. I love the Commons, but I do not want it to dwindle gently into a museum attracting visitors on the strength of its heroic history. I want the Commons to remain the great forum of our nation, in which the views of the public find voice and in which their opinions are heard. I want the Commons to derive its authority from the respect and trust of the public, and because of that authority to remain the crucible in which Governments are forged and are broken. To retain that public support, the Commons must accept reform. I ask all those who share my love of this place to demonstrate it tonight by voting to bring the House into the 21st century. 4.35 pm

Eric Forth: I am happy immediately to echo and endorse the sentiments expressed by the Leader of the House. It should be understood that there is no difference across the House—nor could there or should there be—in that we all share an interest and commitment in ensuring that this place plays its full and proper part in the parliamentary process. That much we share.
	I have not been in the House for as long as the Leader of the House, but I have been around for about 19 years. Indeed, there are those who occasionally accuse me of spending too much time here; I cannot imagine why. That is my commitment to the House. All that I say today will be predicated on my judgment, and that of my right hon. and hon. Friends, as to whether or not the proposed changes enhance the role of the House of Commons vis-á-vis Government. Our principal criterion will be that. It will not be the convenience of Members of Parliament, or even the response to opinion polls. I know how wedded the Government are to opinion polls, focus groups and so on, but however important a role those may play in many people's minds, I do not think that some judgment about the Government's perception of this place should be the definitive factor.
	If we consider parliamentary democracies around the world—if we look to the North American continent, to continental Europe and to the continental Parliaments that have chosen to emulate our proceedings and history—we realise the sad truth. No matter how differently those democracies approach their politics in terms of consensus or confrontation, in terms of sitting hours and in terms of behavioural pattern, all around the world electorates are losing faith in the political process.
	I do not accept the analysis so often presented to us—the suggestion that if only we can change the image of the House, the electors will come flocking back to the polling booth. I think we can dismiss straight away any notion that if we turn up at 11.30 am instead of 2.30 pm, or 9.30 am, and install glass corridors along which people can walk and see what we are doing, the electorate will be enthused and turn out to vote more often. We must find some other solution.
	I want first to draw attention to some of the key phrases in the Select Committee's report. I shall then consider the motion in the name of the Leader of the House and say a few words about the important proposals tabled in my name and those of some of my right hon. and hon. Friends.
	Paragraph 7 states:
	XOur proposals are based on the sound principle that good scrutiny makes good government."
	There is no argument there. We believe that: we believe in the most effective possible parliamentary scrutiny of what the Government of the day are doing, and we seek to strengthen the power of scrutiny.
	The report continues—what the Leader of the House has just said echoes this—
	XThe rights of every citizen would be diminished if Parliament lost its authority as the legitimate expression of our representative democracy, or if the decisions of Government are not effectively scrutinised by Parliament."
	I am sure that Members throughout the Chamber can heartily endorse that proposition too. Where we may differ is in our view on whether what the Government—thinly cloaked as the Modernisation Committee on this occasion—propose will make the House of Commons more effective in scrutinising the Government and holding them to account.
	According to paragraph 35,
	XThe prime problem in securing better scrutiny of legislation is the pressure on parliamentary time."
	The Leader of the House made much play of that, in support of his proposal for what has come to be known as carry-over or roll-over. I challenge what he has said, at its most fundamental level. He has said that there is a lack of legislative time, meaning that the Government must be able to carry over their Bills from one Session to another. There are a number of flaws in that argument, the most obvious of which is that the Government are actually reducing the amount of time that the House sits. They want to do away with many Friday sittings, and they have already done away with the time after 10 o'clock in the evening, which the Leader of the House and his supporters much derided. The Government have systematically reduced the time available to this legislature for scrutinising legislation and holding the Government to account.
	Worse than that, due to the systematic and ruthless programming of Bills—in other words, automatic guillotining—the Government have given themselves lots of time in which to legislate. So the argument that the Government are somehow pressed for time within a Session simply cannot be sustained. Time is freely available to the Government, and if they wanted more time within a Session, they could restore it by reversing all the things that they have already done. The analysis of the Leader of the House therefore holds no water at all.
	The current end-of-Session buffer provides some form of discipline on the Government of the day. It forces them to prioritise their legislation, and to propose only those Bills that they believe are important. The Leader of the House wants to remove that discipline, so that the Government can legislate as much as they want, unconstrained by the end-of-Session buffer. That is our principal objection to the idea of roll-over. That good example shows that the right hon. Gentleman's argument—that this proposal will somehow enhance the role of the House simply—cannot be sustained.

Nicholas Winterton: In my view, the Leader of the House gave a very firm assurance during Modernisation Committee debates that it was the Government's intention not to introduce more legislation, but to provide better scrutiny of the same amount of legislation. Will my right hon. Friend challenge the Leader of the House now to give that assurance not just to the Committee, but to the House?

Eric Forth: My hon. Friend has done a very effective job in challenging the Leader of the House, and I am more than happy to pick up that challenge. In the end, I suspect that the acid test will be whether, over a very brief period, the Government start to increase the number of Bills that they introduce, unconstrained by the end-of-Session limitation, and facilitated by continuing, ruthless and routine guillotining and timetabling of Bills.

Angela Browning: Does my right hon. Friend share my concern about a tendency that is developing? There is pre-legislative scrutiny of Bills and scrutiny of them in Committee, but the Government are tending to introduce a lot of new clauses in another place. Because of guillotining, we are unable to look at such provisions at all, and the same point will apply to the terms of the proposal before us.

Eric Forth: Sadly, that has proved to be the case. As recent experience shows—it is one reason why we voted against the timetabling of Bills—evidence abounds of our being unable properly to discharge our responsibility, as one House of the legislature, in scrutinising Bills. As a result, we are passing that responsibility to those in another place. I yield to none in my admiration for what the House of Lords does; I just wish that we were still able properly to discharge our responsibilities, in the way that our colleagues at the other end of the Building are able to do.

Robin Cook: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for allowing the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) and I to pass messages to each other through his speech. I respond to the challenge by saying that I fully stand by the commitment in the Modernisation Committee report that the purpose of carry-over is not to increase Government legislation. There would be no point in the Government's seeking such an increase, because it would be self-defeating. In the second year, one would run into even greater congestion if the total volume were increased. That is why carry-over—taking the two years together—cannot increase the total volume of legislation.

Eric Forth: Well, we shall see. I think that we are entitled to be just a little suspicious of the Government's motives at this stage, so I shall sustain my opposition to carry-over, and I invite my right hon. and hon. Friends to do so as well.

Peter Pike: Does the right hon. Gentleman not accept the belief of many that—as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said—because we elect a five-year Parliament, the phased introduction of legislation during that period would be much more sensible? When the right hon. Gentleman was a Minister and he introduced legislation late on in a Session, did he ever feel that it might not be properly scrutinised? On the other hand, did he ever have to withhold legislation that he wanted to introduce until the new Session? I ask him to recall his feelings as a former Minister.

Eric Forth: My recollection is that I was always reluctant to bring legislation to the House and that when I did it was always well planned and well executed. I recall that in the 1991-92 Session I took through the House what was at that time the largest Education Bill ever introduced. We probably spent some 120 to 150 hours in Standing Committee before there was any thought of bringing in a guillotine. It is interesting to reflect on the approach to legislation in the 1980s and early 1990s, and compare it with the approach taken by the Government now. I have no difficulty with my memory of the rosy days that were my time as a Minister as they compare with the approach suggested by the Government.
	The Modernisation Committee report contends:
	XTo be effective it is necessary for the House of Commons to make more use of the earlier part of the day."
	I could not agree more. The Opposition are fully signed up to that proposition. What mystifies us is why the Government are making the odd, hybrid suggestion that the parliamentary day start at 11.30. In some ways, it is the worst of all worlds. We have picked the argument up and taken it to its logical conclusion: we propose that, to make the fullest use of the parliamentary day, it would make sense for the House to meet at 9.30 in the morning, and to allocate that morning session to the very important matters of departmental questions, topical questions, ministerial statements and all the other vehicles by means of which hon. Members of all parties can seek to hold the Government to account and question Ministers.

Julian Brazier: Earlier, I invited the Leader of the House to comment on my right hon. Friend's excellent proposal. Did my right hon. Friend notice that the only objection that the right hon. Gentleman was able to raise was the technical one that it would somehow interfere with Mr. Speaker's ability to select amendments and so on? Is not that a bizarre argument, as such work could presumably be done on the preceding evening?

Eric Forth: I have the utmost faith that you, Mr. Speaker, your colleagues and the Clerks of the House would be able to respond if the House wished to sit at 9.30 in the morning. I agree that the Leader of the House's objection to our proposal was rather spurious.
	Having set aside the early part of the day to giving hon. Members the opportunity to question the Government and hold them to account, we want to be able to guarantee that the afternoon period between 2 pm and 7 pm would protect the House in its legislative role, which is when it considers the Second Reading and Report stages of Bills, for instance. The Opposition are mystified as to why the Government and the Modernisation Committee should have produced what is a rather half-baked proposal. What they propose is neither what we do now nor, as we see it, is it a proper use of the parliamentary day.

Patrick Cormack: Will my right hon. Friend make it clear that, when he uses the royal Xwe", he is not referring to everyone on the Opposition Benches? Further, will he also answer the point raised by the Leader of the House by making it plain that the vote on the motion before us is totally unfettered and free and that, when I vote against a start time of 9.30 am—as I undoubtedly shall—I shall be exercising that privilege with his total approval?

Eric Forth: I assure my hon. Friend that I would never dream of attempting to speak on his behalf, and that I shall not do so on this occasion. The Leader of the House has teased me about this a couple of times now. The right hon. Gentleman is a student of Hansard, and will know that once or twice I have been reported as having nodded assent. The Opposition have asked colleagues to be present for this very important set of votes but, beyond that, we expect all hon. Members to exercise their individual judgment on the merits of the matters before them. My role is simply to set out my views, the views of those of my colleagues with whom I have discussed these matters, and the views of those in whose name the amendments have been tabled.
	In that regard, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may I tender the apologies for absence of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight)? He has been on parliamentary business abroad and has been unavoidably detained. He has asked me to convey his apologies to the House, and I hope that they will be accepted.
	I do not want to get bogged down or diverted by the argument about hours, which I think reflects what the Leader of the House said. The hours that we sit have an importance, of course, and we must all make our own judgment about how best we think the House can discharge its responsibilities in the hours that it sits. However, that cannot be seen as the main issue. If we look back far enough in history, in its very early days the House sat at 8.30 am, for quite some time. Whether we choose to start at 9.30 or 11.30 in the morning or whether we continue with the current hours, we will consider the options and make our various judgments, but we must not become too distracted. We must focus on how we use those hours—that is the key to the matter. We must consider the way in which the changes will reflect that.
	Paragraph 63 of the report recommends:
	XOn Thursdays main business should end at 6.00 pm which would better enable Members to travel that evening to their constituencies."
	That is true, which is why we shall not oppose the recommendation. However, I know that many Members on both sides of the House find the argument about so-called family friendly hours a bit bizarre, when many families live in constituencies very far from Westminster. The sad truth is that this is rather an Islington argument. It has a certain appeal to those fortunate enough to have homes near the House. Even Mrs. Forth occasionally expresses enthusiasm for the idea that she might see me in the evenings. [Laughter.] I knew that I was pushing my luck with that remark. However, there is a serious point here—we must not become carried away with the idea that all Members of this House can go home, put on their slippers and cuddle the cat, or whatever else they cuddle in the evenings, because very many, almost certainly the majority, do not have that privilege. It is with that in mind that we, in our own ways, will be looking at the proposal on hours.

Caroline Flint: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I hope to catch your eye on this point later, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I represent a seat in south Yorkshire and live there with my family as well. One of the difficulties in the debate is that we all have different types of family: some of us have children, some do not; some of us live in London, some do not and some of us have constituencies nearby while some do not. It is not possible to have Xone size fits all", but we can give greater meaning to the parliamentary week. If, when I go home at the end of the week, I am not tired because of sitting here until 10 or 11 o'clock at night, but have had a reasonable working day instead, I can better be a good mother to my family as well as a good MP to my constituents.

Eric Forth: Far be it from me to comment on the hon. Lady's stamina. [Interruption.] I do not believe that such a consideration should be a principal determinant of the hours that we sit. When I came here in the 1980s as an obscure Government Back Bencher—admittedly as a much younger man—I was here very late a lot of the time, and I adapted and adjusted to that. [Interruption.] It has made me what I am today. Although that is a factor—indeed, all these matters are factors that we must consider—I do not believe that it should be the main determinant in deciding how we sit or work.

Oona King: I recognise that that is not the main or determinant factor, but does the right hon. Gentleman concur that if Members have responsibility for families, working from 9 am to 11pm or midnight precludes having a life of any description? Of the 30 Members of Parliament on the Benches directly behind him, only two are women. We know of one Member who resigned recently because of this issue, so making our democracy more representative should be a factor that flits across colleagues' minds when they vote.

Eric Forth: Of course that is a factor and each Member will decide how important it is to them in the context of their parliamentary work and their parliamentary duties. I have no difficulty with that proposition.

Gregory Barker: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Eric Forth: I will, but I really want to move on. I said that I did not want to get too bogged down in this issue and I meant it; but it is obvious that it is very much on the minds of Members, so I shall give way to my hon. Friend. However, I want to make progress.

Gregory Barker: I have three young children, who live in the constituency with my wife. I do not know what time Labour Members put their children to bed, but if we do not finish voting until 7.30, what time during a school week could we go home to see our children even if they lived in London? It is complete nonsense to say that the proposals are family friendly; they are about slacking off to go to the theatre or do whatever else Members might want to do, rather than being in this place holding the Government to account as our constituents expect of us.

Eric Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend because he illustrates well the range of views that Members bring to this matter. That probably explains the wide range of responses to the survey carried out by the Leader of the House.

Gerald Kaufman: The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) said that if changes were made it would be easier for us to go to the theatre, so I am rapidly being converted to new hours for the House.
	However, does the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) agree that it is bizarre to the point of being ultra-ludicrous to suggest that there is any way whatever that we can reform the hours or procedures of this place so as to turn being a Member of Parliament into a job comparable with any other job?

Eric Forth: I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman.
	I want to wrap up this part of my speech and move on. One of the conceptual difficulties that I have with the debate is that many Members seem to want to compare both our role and our environment with those in an office block or a factory. They see the House as a place where we clock in, pass as much legislation as possible and clock off.

Alice Mahon: rose—

Glenda Jackson: rose—

Eric Forth: I shall give way in a moment, but I want to move on.
	The debate illustrates—as it needs to do—our approach to our role in this place and, equally important, how we see the role of Parliament and of the House of Commons vis-á-vis the Government of the day. I do not see this place as a legislative factory and I do not believe that we should measure ourselves by the ease with which the Government get their way—quite the opposite. My avowed intention in this place is to make life as difficult as possible for the Government in order to try to ensure that what they do is properly scrutinised and that they are properly held to account.

Alice Mahon: I want to try to be helpful. In the real world, people outside this place work nights; they work shifts. Factories work 24 hours a day. Dare I mention firefighters, nurses, the police and local authority workers? May I also kill the myth about people not wanting to work in this place until 10 pm? I am sure that hon. Members will agree that for many women that is the only time that they can work. When my children were small, I worked at nights—12 hours a night—for many, many years.

Eric Forth: I am grateful to the hon. Lady; she brings a rounded perspective to the matter. Many people outside would find this debate bizarre. People are often forced to work unsocial hours—sometimes through choice, but not always. In a funny way, if we work the occasional unsocial hour, we reflect the life style of many people outside. The idea that everybody Xout there" works a neat nine-to-five day and thinks that we are a bit odd for working in the evening strikes me as strange.

Glenda Jackson: Surely one of the incomparable differences about the unsocial hours that the House works is the fact that it is unusual in other workplaces to find subsidised drink, subsidised food and television sets that are almost invariably tuned to sports programmes—almost exclusively football. If the right hon. Gentleman and, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) are confusing work with waiting until the Division bell sounds, I have to say, as a woman, that that is the antithesis of work.

Eric Forth: The hon. Lady gives a very interesting description of the lifestyle of her colleagues. I, for one, will not intrude at all on that analysis, but it stands on the record and will return to haunt her—and them, I have no doubt—in future.
	I want to move on as rapidly—

Kevin Brennan: rose—

Eric Forth: I really do want to move on, because I want to go quickly through the resolution in the name of the Leader of the House, which sets the framework for today's debate. At this point I can switch to positive mode, which we are urged to do these days, and present the smiling face of the Opposition, because I want to stress that we agree with a number of factors, and many of the phrases, in the resolution.
	Of course we welcome
	Xmore routine publication of bills in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny".
	The only thing that I regret is the cautious tone. I should have preferred it if the Leader of the House had said, XWe will publish all Bills in advance for pre-legislative scrutiny unless, as an exception, some sort of unusual or emergency circumstances preclude that". I would prefer it to be done in that way, but we will take at face value what the Leader is saying here and we welcome it, because we want more pre-legislative scrutiny and we believe that that will help us in our duties.
	I wish that I could believe that there will be Xmore flexibility in programming" of Bills. If the Leader of the House is prepared to have discussions with us in the usual way about the proper scrutiny of Bills in Committee, we shall be more than willing to participate in those discussions. The difficulty that we have with what has happened recently is with the ruthless, routine timetabling and guillotining of Bills, so that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) said a short time ago, so many of them are not properly scrutinised.
	We also enthusiastically endorse sittings in September because it will give the House more opportunity to hold the Government to account instead of giving the Government the free ride that they have traditionally had for two and a half months during the summer. I am still intrigued, although I will not press the point at this stage, as to why what we thought was three weeks of Government agony in September has suddenly slipped to two, but that perhaps is too obvious to need further comment or analysis.
	We will be proposing that the House meets at 9.30; I have given my rationale for that. We will seek to oppose the idea of written ministerial statements, which, although it appears to be a technicality, seems to give some sort of endorsement to the idea that Ministers should do more and more by written statement instead of coming to the House and being accountable by giving oral statements. We will oppose the carrying over of Bills, for the reasons that I gave, and we will oppose the absurdity of deferred Divisions, which again we are being asked to endorse this evening, and programming, because we want to continue to make the point that we believe that these matters are wrong and diminish the effectiveness of the House and of parliamentary scrutiny.

Chris Bryant: The shadow Leader of the House is saying, XWe will, we will, we will"; does he mean that a whip is being operated by the Conservative party?

Eric Forth: I do not know how often I have to say this, but I will say it again because it is obvious that some Labour Members require three or four repetitions before they understand. We are not whipping this business. What I have said is what I and my colleagues on the Front Bench believe to be the appropriate response to these very important matters, but we are telling our hon. and right hon. Friends that this is a House of Commons matter, and it is for them to judge, as they will in their different ways, and they will vote in different ways. If any proof is needed of that, following conversations with my colleagues I can assure the hon. Gentleman and others that, on many of these matters, there will not be unanimity among the Opposition. We shall demonstrate by the diversity of our views the mature approach that we take to these matters.
	I hope that those who perhaps took a different view before I stood up will now be so persuaded with what I have said that nearly all of them will join me in the Lobbies tonight, but I suspect that that may be over-optimistic. I give way for the last time; then I will conclude.

Gordon Prentice: I should be interested to know whether the shadow Leader of the House has any views on the future of private Members' Bills, because that is the great lacuna in the document. On Fridays, private Members can introduce their own legislation, or putative legislation, which can get on the statute book, but the document merely refers us to a review in the new Session, about a possible slot for private Members' Bills. Does the shadow Leader of the House have any views on this issue?

Eric Forth: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has given me the opportunity to do something that I like to do on these occasions: quote no less a person than Sir Winston Churchill. In giving evidence to the Select Committee on Procedure in 1931, he said:
	XI am not very anxious to help private Members' Bills. I have seen a great many of them brought forward, and in most cases it was a very good thing that they did not pass. I think there ought to be a very effective procedure for making it difficult for all sorts of happy thoughts to be carried on to the Statute Book."
	I could not and would not attempt to put it better myself. I believe that the present procedure for private Members' Bills is absolutely appropriate and that it gives a balance between the rights of private Members and the difficulty that should always be placed in the way of legislation, so my own personal answer to the hon. Gentleman's very reasonable question is that there is no need to change the procedure for private Members' Bills, and I am sure that Sir Winston would agree with me if he were here today.
	I hope that the House will accept that our approach and response to these proposals is measured. We are not against change in all cases. I hope that I have demonstrated that, where we believe that change is beneficial to the House and where it enhances the role of the House vis-á-vis the Government, we are prepared to accept and endorse it, but where we think that it is yet another step in the diminution of the role of the House and in the reduction in the possibility for Members to hold the Government to account, we will oppose it. That is why we have tabled amendments perhaps to eliminate some items and to change others. I hope that Members will look at them and judge them on their merits, and I invite not only my colleagues—my right hon. and hon. Friends—but Labour Members to judge them in that respect and to vote appropriately later this evening.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must remind the House that there is a 12-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, which operates from now.

Peter Pike: I am glad to have the opportunity to speak at this early stage in this important debate. As a member of the Modernisation Committee—I am the only Labour Member who has served on it since it was established following the 1997 general election—I recognise that this is a compromise package. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has tried for almost a year to reach consensus and to achieve as much support as possible to move forward the procedures of the House, and I congratulate him on his efforts. He will know that I would have wished to go further on one or two issues, but we have to go forward one step at a time, and I assure him that I shall vote with him 100 per cent. in the divisions later tonight.

Kevin Brennan: My hon. Friend describes these measures as a compromise package, but does he not agree that, although it is right for the House to take the decision, it would have been better to consult the people who work here and whose working hours will be affected by these changes before taking a decision?

Peter Pike: I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will reply to that point at the end of the debate. The various House Committees—that on catering and others—have tried to take account of such views. Let us make it absolutely clear that if the main votes are taken at 7 o'clock, the House will not shut down; the catering department, the Library and other facilities will remain open and many Members, including me, will continue to work at our desks until 10 o'clock. I stayed here until gone half-past 11 last night, although the House rose earlier than that. I have no doubt that that will not change as a result of the proposals.

Andrew Turner: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Peter Pike: I want to make my speech, so this will be the last time that I give way.

Andrew Turner: Following the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), does not the hon. Gentleman agree that conventional, modern employment practice involves people putting a proposal to their staff, asking the staff for their view—not assuming their view, as the Government have done—and coming to a conclusion on the basis of the staff's view, as expressed by their representatives? This process seems entirely topsy-turvy.

Peter Pike: I do not accept that at all. My right hon. Friend issued a memorandum almost a year ago, outlining his thoughts on the way forward in the House, and I believe that people, including employees and the staff, have had opportunities to express their views.
	I would have had sympathy with the Procedure Committee on a couple of issues in relation to questions. Members will know that I have long held the view that we should be able to ask questions in the recess, and I still believe that. I accept that we will not be able to do so at the moment, but I hope that we will return to the matter at a future date. I also sympathise with the Procedure Committee with regard to topical questions, but I accept that we will not address that issue at this stage, although we may return to it.
	As the shadow Leader of the House indicated, overwhelming support exists for the proposed 6 pm finish on a Thursday. I remember that the Conservatives put up quite a lot of opposition when we originally proposed a 7 pm finish for Thursday nights. It is now accepted and recognised that that finishing time does not solve the problem for those who live in the north and other parts of the country. The move with regard to Fridays is also sensible. I welcome the fact that the Government will forgo all Government Fridays, and that there will be only private Members' Bills on Fridays in future.
	In respect of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), he and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House know my view that one of the gaps that we will create should be used for private Member's Bills—I would suggest 7 pm on Wednesdays. Again, we must have a full inquiry on that issue, and I hope that, at a future date, we may be able to move in that direction. When we gave up Wednesday morning sittings in favour of Westminster Hall, I believed that that time slot could have been used for private Members' Bills. We will need to return to that issue.
	Given the number of different proposals and views put forward by Members, I recognise that we will not get a consensus on Tuesday and Wednesday sitting times. I worked in a factory in which shifts changed every three days in a continuous glass-making process. Everybody used to say that they did not like the system, as they had to do three eight-hour shifts and then change and do another three eight-hour shifts before moving on. Management used to say to me, as the shop steward, XFind a system that the workers prefer, and we will accept it and implement it," but we could never find a system to which everybody wanted to change. Every Member will have a different view on the way forward. I believe that the proposals for Tuesdays and Wednesdays are sensible, and, as I said, it has already been indicated that overwhelming support exists for the proposal for Thursday.
	I think that we will adjust to the new system in terms of our Committee and other work. As for the suggestion that it will cause problems for Committees, many Committees already meet at half past nine in the morning. The Regulatory Reform Committee, of which I am Chairman, sat at 9.30 this morning, as we have done consistently. I shall sit on the Modernisation Committee at 9.30 tomorrow morning. Some of the problems to which people are drawing attention are not insurmountable.
	In my view, the most important change is carry-over, and I am very sorry to hear the Opposition's comments on the matter. Let us be absolutely clear—carry-over of legislation is crucial. I support it because I genuinely believe that people elect a five-year Parliament. At a general election, people vote for a Government to have a four-year or five-year programme, not four one-year programmes. There should be a sensible flow of legislation; it should not be restricted by an artificial cut-off, as will happen on Thursday next week. That is nonsense, and we must be sensible.
	I link with that the introduction of more draft legislation, which will ensure better legislation, as carry-over will ensure better scrutiny of legislation. Many years ago, the shadow Leader of the House served on the Bill that became the Transport Act 1985. He will remember that that Bill was guillotined. Hardly any of it had been debated in the House of Commons, and many sections of it were not scrutinised in the other place. What an absolute nonsense for a Bill that has had tremendous implications for bus transport in the whole country since then.

Eric Forth: Can I test the hon. Gentleman's memory a little further? Does he remember roughly how many hours my Government allowed that Bill in Committee before they guillotined it? Will he confess that one of the reasons why it was not properly scrutinised in the time allocated was that the then Opposition—I have no problem with this in those circumstances—filibustered the Bill so that it could not be scrutinised? Will he tell us how many hours the Bill was allowed in Committee?

Peter Pike: I cannot remember the exact number of hours, but I can remember saying to the right hon. Gentleman in an intervention on one of his speeches that he made Margaret Thatcher seem a moderate. He said that that was a compliment and that he accepted it. That puts his position into perspective.
	That style of debating and of dealing with legislation—the Opposition thought that their role in delaying proceedings and provoking a guillotine showed that they had opposed a measure—was nonsense. It was not constructive for the country and a 10-minute—or something like it—limit on speeches will ensure better scrutiny. It is nonsense to believe that what we did in 1984 and 1985 is how people want Parliament to operate in the 21st century. I accept that there was filibustering, but I do not defend it.
	I remember that when we considered the Gas Act 1986, the then Member for Rhondda spoke for two and a half hours about Wales having a national mistletoe planting day. At the end of that time, he had convinced me of the importance of the issue. However, debating in that way is nonsense, and that is what modernisation is trying to prevent. That is why we want time limits on speeches and better scrutiny.
	The thrust behind the proposals for modernisation is not to make our job easier or to allow us to take hours off. That is not what I want. I want to ensure that we have better legislation and better scrutiny. I will not be here, but I accept that, in the years ahead, we will once again be on the Opposition Benches. That may be in 20 or 30 years, and the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) may be in government again if he is not too old or past it. He will then view some of the changes that we are announcing today as very sensible. Draft Bills are important and carry-over is essential.
	We also need an annual calendar. How stupid we all seem when constituents ask us whether we can do something in our constituencies and we have to say that we do not know. They sometimes ask us, XCan we come and lobby you on this issue in Parliament?", but we have to say that we do not know whether it will be debated. They tell us that they know that it will be because they have received notification. What nonsense that is. We should know and be able to plan the use of our time in our constituencies. If I accept a commitment in Burnley, I should know with 100 per cent. certainty that I will be able to fulfil it. The proposal is sensible.
	Time limits on speeches are important. Many people will argue that it is wrong to impose such limits, but I believe that they are right. I do not have a right to speak at length if that means that I will prevent some of my colleagues from having an opportunity to express their views. We are all elected as equal Members, and we should have the same opportunities to debate the issues. The type of filibustering that the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst has carried out when he has opposed legislation has done the House a disservice. I hope that the proposals will be carried tonight.

Paul Tyler: I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) said. However, he paid tribute to the Leader of the House, and I hope that the Leader of the House will forgive me if I do not follow the hon. Gentleman down that path. The media and Members of the House seem to treat the proposals as though they are Government proposals. They are not. They are the proposals of a Select Committee, just as the proposals of the Procedure Committee, of which the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) is the distinguished Chairman, are from an all-party Committee. It is important to recognise that.

Eric Forth: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Paul Tyler: Yes, but I have only just started my speech.

Eric Forth: Will the hon. Gentleman concede, however, that the so-called Modernisation Committee, like all Committees of the House, has a large Government majority and that in this case—unusually and wrongly—it is chaired by a member of the Government and, indeed, a Cabinet Minister? Does that not make the Committee rather different?

Paul Tyler: The right hon. Gentleman is not a Committee member. I very much regret that the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight) is not here. I pay tribute to his role in Committee. He was helpful, sensible and level headed, and we attempted to produce proposals that would benefit the whole House in its relationship to Government.
	I know that the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) has read the report, but he did not sit through the Committee's sittings. There was no minority report. The Conservatives did not vote against the report. Indeed, they made a number of suggestions to improve and strengthen it, some of which my colleague and I supported. It is a grave pity if the right hon. Gentleman has not had the benefit of the advice of the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire. The Committee reached an important consensus on strengthening the role of the House in relation to Government. I pay tribute to the Leader of the House for accepting that suggestion. I dare say he did not play it up at great length in Cabinet discussions, but it is an important part of the report.
	The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst plays a wonderful duet with the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire, who takes a level-headed, low-key approach. We have got used to the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst playing a more doom-laden, bloodcurdling role, as he did today. I see him nodding, so he agrees with my description. It is Dracula and Scooby-Doo.

Eric Forth: Which am I?

Paul Tyler: Whichever one the right hon. Gentleman thinks best displays his tendencies.
	People who approach the problem with a conservative frame of mind—either big C or little c—must address the central issue. Unless the House does something to improve its working methods, we are in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant and being bypassed by the Government.
	Let me give an example. The right hon. Gentleman said that his colleagues have a free vote. I accept what he tells us because he is an honourable man. Last week, however, he and his colleagues briefed the Financial Times as follows:
	XIt had been assumed that all MPs would be given a free vote. But modernisers now fear that the Conservatives may not be, since Mr Forth last week set out what he called 'the policy of the official opposition on sitting hours'."
	So they have a policy, but they also have a free vote. Even more indicative of their frame of mind is what the article went on to say:
	XThis would involve the House sitting at 9.30am midweek—rather than 11.30am as proposed—and breaking for lunch."
	That is the real issue. If we have an hour for questions at 9.30 and perhaps another hour for statements, that would take us to 11.30. So the official approach of the Conservative Front Bench is that the House takes from 11.30 to 2 pm for lunch. That is what their policy is all about.
	Some Members who contributed to the debates on modernisation and the work of the two Select Committees, and who also responded to the questionnaire about how best to manage our affairs, took a much more practical attitude than that displayed by the right hon. Gentleman on behalf of his party. We have a real opportunity to gain, or in some people's minds to regain, more control of the management of our business. It is an attempt to wrest back from the business managers and the usual channels greater control of our affairs. That might explain the rumours of the past few weeks, which also circulated in May. Perhaps the Government Whips are unhappy with some of the proposals. Opposition Members must think carefully about that. I hope that Back Benchers will not be bamboozled as they were in May.

Stephen McCabe: I was struck by the hon. Gentleman's idea that any doubt about the proposals makes one a conservative with either a small c or a large C. Does he think that the whole package must be adopted by everyone and that there is no space for critical examination of elements of it? Surely the view of the House is that there is much merit in some of the package, but that there is much doubt about other parts of it.

Paul Tyler: I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. This is a package, but I am not suggesting that every part is essential. Indeed, I agree with the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst that hours are not the only or even the predominant issue; there are other good parts to the package. My party has no whip on this matter, but I think that the majority of my hon. Friends agree that the proposals hold together as a good package.
	The issues that we must address this evening are important and, if approached positively by all parties, they could make a major change to what I would call the balance of trade between the House and the Government. One example is the Procedure Committee's recommendations on questions. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Macclesfield and his colleagues on that Committee for their thorough job of investigating how we can improve our ability to put topical questions. I agree with the amendments on that subject tabled by several members of the Procedure Committee.
	We should have topical questions, and I regret that the Government have apparently shut the door on that proposal. If it is not passed this evening, I hope that through the appropriate channels we may tactfully suggest to the Speaker that we would like more private notice questions to be permitted, particularly from Back Benchers. The extent to which private notice questions are dominated by Front-Bench Members, including, on rare occasions, my colleagues, is a pity. There should be more opportunities for private notice questions or, as we suggest in our report they should be renamed, urgent questions.
	The purpose of the changes in hours is not to make the House and its procedures more Member friendly or even more family friendly; it is to make them more voter friendly. That is why the report places great emphasis on the fact that we have, through the various media, to address an audience that is quite different from the audience of 100 or 200 years ago. Parliament, if it is to be effective and relevant, has to be accessible, in the full sense of the word, and visible. It has to be shown to be setting the daily media agenda rather than simply reacting to it much later.

Simon Thomas: I want to make it clear to the hon. Gentleman that what I am about to say is coloured by the fact that I support at least 80 per cent. of the proposals. Is he not aware of recent moves by media companies such as the BBC to devote less broadcasting time to this place? For example, some reporters are going out, away from institutions such as Westminster, to set the political agenda elsewhere in the United Kingdom. We will not attract media attention and, therefore, voter interest back to this place until it does its job, which is to hold the Government to account. The hon. Gentleman has not yet proved that the changes, apart from being an improvement for the Members, will improve the scrutiny of the Government.

Paul Tyler: That is a matter for individual Members to decide. The BBC gave evidence to the Modernisation Committee in which it welcomed the fact that Parliament would be seen to be taking the initiative earlier in the day. During the 1992–97 Parliament, when the hon. Gentleman was not here, there was a succession of evenings when we were voting at 10 o'clock and, on occasion, defeating the Government, but our electors had no idea of what we were doing. Commentators on the television and radio news repeatedly stated that something was going on in the House of Commons but they could not tell the public what was going on because the House was still voting—what a ridiculous situation.
	There are still some members of the press who will sit through our proceedings all evening and attempt to get something about them in the broadsheets the next morning. The Press Association is the exception that proves the rule. However, the majority of those who, in a former age, sat in the Gallery and wrote screeds to be read by an elite in the broadsheets have long since gone. We must use the modern media to communicate with the people who send us here. That is what these proposals are about. Their aim is not to make life easier for us but to make Parliament more accessible to those who voted for us.

Edward Leigh: I have some sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's arguments. The truth is that, apart from breaking news, the modern media will not report anything much after 5 pm. In my view, the proposals are not about protecting families or anything else, but about Parliament doing its job and speaking to the nation. There is no point in having long, drawn out speeches at 8 or 9 o'clock in the evening, when no one is listening to us.

Paul Tyler: I have a great deal of sympathy with that view, and I hope that all hon. Members will therefore support shorter speeches. I shall try to speak briefly, so perhaps I should take no more interventions.
	As the Leader of the House pointed out, the House sitting in the evening is a comparatively recent phenomenon. I have to take indirect responsibility for that, in that it was a notable constituent, Sir Goldsworthy Gurney of Bude, North Cornwall, who invented a gas light that made it possible for Members of Parliament to see what they were doing in the evening, thus making it possible for the House of Commons to sit then. That happened in the early 19th century; before then, our predecessors found it impossible to see what they were doing, dependent as they were on candlelight. I therefore think that there is a strong case for adjusting our business to the current technological position.
	I agree with the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) about carry-over. There is an extraordinary degree of misunderstanding about carry-over. The absurdity of Second Reading debates and divisions coming along like London buses, three or four at a time, before Christmas, followed by a great dearth as the Bills go to the other place, and then a rush as they come back here for final stages, does not lend itself to intelligent scrutiny. It is similarly absurd that Governments introduce Bills that have not been properly prepared because they have to do so immediately after the Queen's Speech. Carry-over offers opportunities to spread the business, but safeguards are important.
	There are two important safeguards, the first of which has already been mentioned. My hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) raised the issue in the Committee. If a measure is carried over and a bit more time is spent on it, less legislation is possible in the second year. There is a natural rate of throughput. I cannot accept the suggestion that carry-over means that a lot more legislation can be pushed through the pipeline—there simply is not the capacity to do that. More important still, as Lord Norton, an important constitutional expert, made clear, the House of Lords has also built in a highly effective safeguard to ensure that that House is not steamrollered into accepting carry-over, except in suitable circumstances.

John Burnett: What is important is the interaction on carry-over between the Lords and this place. Some Members on both sides of the House feel a degree of disquiet about that power, which we see as fettering our own. Will my hon. Friend confirm that there will be individual votes on each Bill to be carried over—it is a once-only thing—and individual votes by both Houses; and that failure in one House means that the Bill fails? Is that correct?

Paul Tyler: It would be wrong of me to pretend any great expertise in how the other place will manage its business, but I think that the safeguard is critical. There is no way in which the carry-over can extend beyond the second Session—in effect, there is a 12-month envelope. Secondly, there is no way in which the Government can push an extension through the House of Commons without a debate. Of course, the Lords have to abide by their own rules and we cannot constrain them, but I am persuaded by the Conservatives' constitutional specialist, who gave evidence on that issue, that there are effective safeguards.
	It is also worth mentioning that since all parties are now apparently devoted to the principle that the second Chamber, once reformed, will never again have a majority from any one party, the likelihood of the Lords proving to be irresponsible in applying the safeguards is extremely limited.

Patrick Cormack: The hon. Gentleman favours a wholly elected House of Lords. How, in the name of goodness, can one guarantee that it will never have a majority from any one party?

Paul Tyler: It depends entirely on the electoral system. I am sure that Mr. Deputy Speaker would not permit me to advance further down that route. There is no method under an electoral system that I would support, or I am sure that he would support—

Patrick Cormack: No, I would not.

Paul Tyler: —that would produce a majority for any one party in the House of Lords. I am grateful to hear the hon. Gentleman's apparent reaction to that.
	Westminster Hall has proved a considerable success, not least because the different and more consensual layout enables Labour Members to cross-question Ministers without feeling in any way disloyal. The result is extremely interesting. I have participated in a number of debates at Westminster Hall, and Ministers have to answer to all Members in a way that is less party political but more effective.
	I accept the point that the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst made about deferred divisions. We need to look at that matter again. It is notable—I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman is not present to hear my compliment—that under the leadership of the Leader of the House there has been a great reduction in the number of deferred Divisions.
	The issue of programming motions is also with us. I believe that it requires a great deal more attention. We have an explicit assurance that if the package before us makes some real progress, programming will be one of the subjects that has to be debated, not only with those who occupy the Front Benches of both Opposition parties, but with Members generally. I believe that those who will undertake a particular stage of scrutiny, as members of a Standing Committee or when a Bill returns to the whole House, should have the greatest say in how that exercise will be undertaken. That has begun to happen embryonically with some Bills and in respect of some Committees. The hon. Member for Macclesfield has given us a lead on the extent to which the Chair of a Committee can assist in that process. That is extremely important.
	Finally, there is the issue of short speeches. Clearly, I should try to complete my remarks as soon as I can to meet the requirement. I shall take advantage of a quotation that was handed to me by my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Foster). Members may know that in former time reports of the proceedings of this place were sometimes illegal and sometimes very constrained. Very often the only people who could tell the outside world what was really going on in the House were the Doorkeepers. I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has told me of a Mr. William White, a former Head Doorkeeper. In 1870, he wrote:
	XIf all useless verbiage could be strained out of our parliamentary speeches, their force would be increased, the morning papers might diminish their reporting staff and the House might rise every night at 12, and many a valuable life would be prolonged."
	I intend to prolong my life by coming to a conclusion.
	First, I believe that this place works best when we adopt an evolutionary approach to the way in which we operate, not a revolutionary one. To the extent to which we have achieved consensus in the Modernisation Committee, that is much to the credit of all members of it, not least to the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire, who has played a constructive role.
	Secondly, I believe that we must increase the topicality and relevance of our proceedings. Thirdly, we must try to ensure that our proceedings are more visible and accessible to those who send us to this place; otherwise we are in great danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant and giving too much power to the Government, who will then have literally the whip hand.
	As I have said, I believe that the proposals are voter friendly, which is what gives them their strength. If we can both improve scrutiny and have more control over the management of our own business in the House, we shall be doing a very good turn for Parliament this evening.

Chris Mullin: I shall speak mainly against the proposed changes to the sitting times on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The amendment to motion 6, which is in my name and those of other right hon. and hon. Members, will give Members an opportunity to vote against earlier sitting times on Wednesdays without denying them the opportunity to go home an hour earlier on Thursdays, which I support.
	I am a moderniser—but not at any price. I am in favour of measures designed to improve the quality of scrutiny but opposed to any that diminish it. I am especially keen that Parliament should sit for at least two weeks in September. First, it has always seemed wrong that the Government should enjoy a three-month holiday from scrutiny each summer and, secondly, however hard we try, it is not possible to explain to our constituents that we are all hard at work in our constituencies during September. If we care about the esteem in which this place is held by people outside, the issue of the summer recess is a bullet that had to be bitten. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House on doing so.
	As my right hon. Friend said, the big prize if we are to make this place more effective is prior scrutiny of legislation while it is still in draft and before it becomes set in stone. I know that there have been some successful experiments, but I look forward to seeing such scrutiny happen as a matter of course. I welcome what he said about the subject and I hope that I live long enough to see the day when it comes to pass. Some of the measures that we are considering—notably the ability to carry forward legislation from one Session to another—will make that easier, and I shall vote with enthusiasm for them.
	Indeed, I shall support all the proposals except those that would allow the House to knock off at 7 o'clock on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. My right hon. Friend said in his opening remarks that his sole purpose was to make Parliament more effective. I cannot for the life of me see how cutting three hours off the parliamentary day will make us more effective. [Interruption.] I realise that hon. Members will suggest that we are not reducing the time, but simply moving it backwards.

Joan Ruddock: rose—

Chris Mullin: To save my hon. Friend the trouble of having to intervene, let me say that, for me, the parliamentary day does not consist merely of what goes on in the Chamber. That is the difference between us.

Helen Jackson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I am aware that we are on opposite sides of the argument, but on the question of the number of hours in a day, does he recognise that the majority of us are conscientious MPs? We arrive here at 9 o'clock or 8 o'clock, but the different hours, in addition to the events, parliamentary functions and discussions that will continue throughout the evening—we are all politicos—will make our active day longer.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. One good reform would be that of keeping interventions as short as they should be.

Chris Mullin: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker; bearing in mind that I am confined to 12 minutes, I hope that you might take account of the odd lengthy intervention.
	I accept that all hon. Members—or just about all—are conscientious. I do not question that for a moment, but I repeat that I believe that a parliamentary day does not consist only of what goes on in the Chamber. That is my only point and I propose to move on.
	We are told that the change is part of a drive to make this place more family friendly, but for those with young families—

Chris Bryant: The Leader of the House never said that.

Chris Mullin: I have heard it said, perhaps not by my right hon. Friend this afternoon, but many times. The proposal might make this place more family friendly for those who are lucky enough to live within commuting distance of Westminster, but what are the 500 or so of us who live beyond commuting distance supposed to do—wander around this place in twilight?

Chris Bryant: Have a life.

Chris Mullin: I have a life, actually.
	Are we supposed to go on cultural outings? Perhaps the theatres and art galleries of the west end will be full of newly liberated Scots and Welsh Members. Somehow I doubt it. If I were a spouse living several hundred miles away, I would prefer to know that my other half was snug in the warm bosom of the mother of Parliaments—[Interruption.] I am sorry if hon. Members do not like what I am saying, but I would be grateful if they at least did me the honour of listening. I would prefer to know that my other half was snug in Parliament, instead of roaming the streets of the west end with too much time on their hands and too much money in their pockets.
	That, however, is not my main objection. My main point is that what my right hon. Friend is proposing will inflict damage on the Select Committees at a time when we are doing all that we can to enhance their status. Like many, though by no means all Select Committees, the Home Affairs Committee meets in the morning so that we do not have to compete with the business in the Chamber and in the hope—

Joan Ruddock: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Chris Mullin: If my hon. Friend will forgive me—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I say to the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) that it is clear that her hon. Friend will not take an intervention. She should therefore sit down.

Chris Mullin: I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me, but I am anxious to make my speech and our time is limited.
	My Select Committee meets in the morning so that we do not have to compete with the business in the Chamber and in the hope that our deliberations will attract the attention of the outside world from time to time. That is more likely if meetings take place in good time for media deadlines and if we are not competing with the Chamber.

Anne Campbell: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Chris Mullin: I have made my position on interventions clear.
	My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said earlier that no one in their right mind would organise a press conference at 4 pm, to which I would add, Xor a Select Committee". I chair the Home Affairs Committee, which used to meet at 4.30 pm on Wednesdays for the convenience of the practising lawyers. Soon after I became Chairman, I received a letter from the home affairs correspondents of The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian. It states:
	XCan we press you to make one small reform in the way your committee is run? The previous chairman, for reasons of which we are not aware, insisted that the committee's hearings did not start until 4.45 pm. This timing made giving any media coverage to all but the most sensational proceedings of the committee very difficult as often the hearings did not end until 6.30 or 7.00 which is far too late for routine stories to be filed and used prominently in the next day's papers"—
	[Interruption.] I am determined to get to the end of my speech, with the House's permission—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. And with my assistance, if necessary.

Chris Mullin: The letter continues:
	XConsequently much of the valuable and interesting work done by the committee was undertaken in complete darkness as far as the public were concerned . . .
	Can we urge you to consider moving the time of your meetings?"
	We solved the problem by moving the meetings to Tuesday mornings. However, if my right hon. Friend has his way, we will be forced back into afternoon or early evening sittings. Far from improving the quality of scrutiny, the proposal will diminish it.

Robin Cook: Five Select Committees met last week at 9.30 am. There is enough time for a two-hour meeting before the House sits at 11.30. There is no reason why Select Committees cannot meet before the House if they wish. However, it is extraordinary that my hon. Friend argues that the House should construct its hours around the Committee rather than vice versa.

Chris Mullin: I accept that different Select Committees have differing experiences. The problem with the Home Affairs Committee applies to some of the other big Committees: a great deal of the business in the Chamber is within our remit. In some weeks, that applies to perhaps a third of the business. The proposed change will therefore prove difficult. I do not make too much of it, because I acknowledge that different Select Committee members will have different experiences. However, the problem exists, and changing the time will not improve scrutiny one iota.
	I want to make another point that some hon. Members may consider minor, but is worth factoring in. A strength of our system is that Ministers are obliged to mix with the poor bloody infantry. Anyone who visits the Tea Room on any Tuesday or Wednesday evening after 7 pm will find Ministers, from the Deputy Prime Minister down, dining and socialising with Back Benchers. A good deal of informal business is done in that way. If Ministers are no longer obliged to come here after 7 pm because there is no vote, they will simply stay in their Departments until they finish their boxes. Those who live in London—most of the main movers and shakers do—will then go home, and the relationship between Back Benchers and Front Benchers will be damaged. I simply mention that minor point in passing in case no one else considers it. Perhaps those who care about the relationship between Parliament and the Executive will wish to bear it in mind when they vote.
	I urge hon. Members to vote against motion 7, which provides for earlier sittings on Tuesday, and in favour of amendment (a) to motion 6. In supporting amendment (a), hon. Members would vote against earlier sittings on Wednesday without jeopardising the proposed new arrangements for Thursday and Friday, which I support. I shall press the amendment at the appropriate time. 5.49 pm

Nicholas Winterton: The majority of my comments relate to motion 4 on parliamentary questions, and to motion 5 and the amendments standing in my name and those of other members of the Procedure Committee.
	I begin by thanking and paying tribute to all the members of the Procedure Committee from all political parties, who showed tremendous commitment and hard work in producing this very important report. The Committee's report on parliamentary questions is the first major review of the subject for over 10 years. We say that the system of parliamentary questions is
	Xan essential part of the process by which Parliament exercises its authority and holds the Government to account".
	However, there are major flaws in the way the system works.
	We began our inquiry by seeking the views of all Members of the House through a questionnaire. I believe that it was important to do so, because the composition of the House has changed so much since the last major inquiry.

Douglas Hogg: For the worse.

Nicholas Winterton: My right hon. and learned Friend is entitled to his view.
	There is a new generation of Members, and we wanted to know how they use questions and whether they think the system is working as well as it might. The clear answer to the questionnaire was no, at least in some respects. We have put together a package of recommendations that attempts to redress the deficiencies that our survey clearly identified. I am pleased that the Government's reply to our report accepts most of those recommendations.
	At this stage, I wish to pay tribute to the Leader of the House, who gave very stimulating evidence to our inquiry and has engaged constructively with the Committee at all stages. In a moment, I shall deal with a small number of recommendations that the Government have rejected, but that should not in any way detract from the fact that, overall, their response has been very positive.
	The biggest single criticism of the oral questions system is that it lacks topicality and relevance. That is because the deadline for tabling questions is still 10 sitting days, or two calendar weeks. As a result, it is often impossible for Members to raise in the Chamber the issues that the rest of the country is talking about. The Chamber therefore appears to be out of touch and irrelevant. The real questioning of Ministers, as has already been said in the debate, takes place on XNewsnight" or the XToday" programme.
	As part of our inquiry, we researched the history of the questions system. We found that the House never intended that the notice period should be so long. As we say,
	Xthe present deadline arose as the unintended consequence of rules designed for other purposes".
	We also point out that very short deadlines were the norm 100 years ago. Before 1902, a question could be tabled for answer the following day, and from 1902 to 1947, only two days' notice was required. The current two-week deadline is absurd. We have recommended that it be replaced by a deadline of three working days. We accept that the deadline should not be shorter than that, because I believe that it is reasonable for Departments to have two working days to prepare the briefing for their Ministers.
	The Government's response to our report broadly accepts our recommendation, but proposes that the three territorial Departments—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—should have a slightly longer notice period and that our proposal should be further modified by discounting sitting as well as non-sitting Fridays from the calculations. It is worth making the latter point to the House.
	The Procedure Committee discussed the Government's response at its meeting last week. We were slightly sceptical about the need for the territorial Departments to be given several extra days' notice, which may conjure up the image of relays of horsemen galloping off to those far-flung places, Edinburgh and Cardiff, or people rowing across to Belfast. We concluded, however, that the Government propose relatively minor modifications of our proposals, which we are content to accept.
	The overall thrust of our recommendations has been accepted by the Government, and is embodied in the Standing Order changes that the House is invited to approve tonight. I believe that if the changes are approved they will have a major impact on Question Time. They will make it much more incisive and much more relevant. We made several connected recommendations, which the Government have also accepted. In particular, we recommended that Members should be allowed to table oral questions on any day after their last Question Time and before the minimum notice period—that is, generally up to four weeks before the day for answer. That represents a major relaxation of existing rules, which would be much appreciated by all Members.
	In general, Members who responded to our questionnaire are much happier with the written questions system than that for oral questions. However, there is concern about the distinction—I say this with emphasis—between named-day questions and ordinary written questions. About half of all written questions tabled are for a named day, and a third are for the earliest possible day. Frankly, the members of the Procedure Committee simply do not believe that such a high proportion of questions can legitimately be described as urgent. We believe that this is an abuse of the system. It is counter-productive, because it leads to a proliferation of holding replies and makes it less likely that the genuinely urgent questions will receive a rapid response.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nicholas Winterton: I have limited time, so, as Chairman of the Committee, it is difficult to do so. If I can, I shall give way to the hon. Lady.
	We have therefore recommended that the House should impose a daily quota per Member of five named-day questions. However, we rejected the Government's suggestion that the minimum period for a reply to a named-day question should be extended from three to four working days. As we say in our report,
	Xthis seems to us wrong in principle: the object of a reform should be to reduce the total number of named-day questions to a sensible level, not to introduce greater delay in replying to questions that are genuinely urgent".
	We make another major recommendation in relation to the use of technology; I know that this is both controversial and sensitive. We considered the implications of allowing questions to be tabled electronically. The big problem is ensuring that electronic tabling does not encourage abuse, with Members giving carte blanche either to their researchers or, even worse, to outside organisations and lobbying groups to table questions on their behalf.
	It would be ridiculous to ignore the potential benefits of new technology and refuse to allow electronic tabling. We considered whether we should recommend that the House insist on what we called Xstrong authentication" of the identity of Members. We could employ a system using what are called biometric techniques, such as fingerprint or iris recognition, which would ensure that questions were submitted only by a Member in person rather than by anyone else acting on his or her behalf. However, such systems would be expensive, complicated and, we suspect, liable to extensive teething problems. Members might also find it rather undignified to have to submit their fingerprints or squint into an iris recognition device every time they want to table a question.
	We have therefore recommended that, in the first instance, the House should conduct an experiment in electronic tabling of questions using a Xweak authentication" system. It would be similar to the system already in operation in the Scottish Parliament and the House of Lords. There would be added safeguards—for instance, questions would be accepted only from addresses in the Parliamentary Data and Video Network, not just from any e-mail address. None the less, we recognise that there would still be potential for abuse with that option.
	We have therefore recommended that Mr. Speaker should have power to abort the experiment if it became clear that large-scale abuse were taking place or if the number of questions tabled rose steeply and ran the risk of overloading the questions system. If that were to happen, we would have to cut our losses and revert to the more expensive option of strong authentication. I very much hope that that would not be necessary.
	The Government have accepted all the recommendations that I have mentioned, sometimes with minor modifications. I shall conclude by dealing with the one major recommendation that they have rejected, which is that there should be a twice weekly session of topical questions in the Chamber. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, following departmental questions, there should be a 30-minute period in which questions would be asked on a single, topical subject. Mr. Speaker would choose the subject on the basis of applications made by Members the previous day.
	In making his choice, Mr. Speaker would be guided by specified criteria, including
	Xtopicality, urgency, the public importance of the subject, suitability in terms of potential for supplementary questions, party balance, and balance between Opposition parties and"—
	this is even more even important to Government Members—
	Xbackbenchers on both sides of the House."
	I am looking particularly at the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), when I say that. Mr. Speaker would aim to achieve an overall balance between those criteria over a period of time. He would also have discretion, if he thought fit, occasionally to substitute two 15-minute sessions for one 30-minute session.
	I am sorry that the Government have decided to reject that recommendation. In my view, it would be an effective way of restoring to the House some control over the use of its time, and that is important. At present, the Executive have total control over when statements are made to the House and on what subject. The system of private notice questions gives the official Opposition some scope to take the initiative, but only very occasionally, and Back Benchers have no equivalent opportunities.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has run out of time.

Stuart Bell: I intervene in the debate as a member of the House of Commons Commission. Under statute, the Commission is responsible for the House's finances and employs almost all its staff. We do not take any collective view on the merits of the Modernisation Committee's recommendations. I know that right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House are interested in the effects that the proposals will have on the House administration and on the services that the House provides. I am also aware of some concerns expressed by Members and by staff, which have been reflected in the questions put by my hon. Friends and responded to by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House.
	The implications of the motions before us are obviously of great importance to the Commission, and we and the Board of Management, chaired by the Clerk of the House, have given them considerable thought. It is extremely difficult to assess the full implications of the changes at this stage, mainly because there are so many variables. I shall give four brief examples.
	First, I noted the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) on when Select Committees may meet. Select Committees may decide to meet much earlier in the day. If they do, there may be difficulties for staff who would have longer journeys to work, and possibly a longer working day. As my right hon. Friend has said, it is up to Committees to decide when they meet. The Commission cannot anticipate: we have to react.
	Secondly, many House staff are not allowed to take leave when the House is sitting. If the windows for leave narrow, that rule may have to be changed. In turn, that may require additional staff to provide cover.
	Thirdly, at the moment the summer recess is a key period for major works with minimum disruption. All of us who happened to be here over the summer will have seen one of the largest building sites in Europe. September sittings will reduce that period, so there may be a cost premium, which in any year will depend on the nature and extent of the works. However, if we have a calendar for the year ahead, the ability to make firm plans will offset that perceived disadvantage.
	Lastly, the earlier finish on Tuesdays and Wednesdays will probably affect the need for catering services in the evenings, but by how much will depend on how many Members, their staff and the staff of the House eat here after the rising. September sittings may redress the balance somewhat.
	It will be clear to the House that the effect of these proposals will depend crucially on how the House, Committees and Members adapt to any new arrangements. The House is not just an organisation: it is also a living organism and, because of its nature, is not easily predictable. However, I can assure the House that we, as Commissioners, and the Clerk and his colleagues are on the case, if I may use the jargon from the television—which we do not always watch in the evenings between votes.
	On finance, the Commission will try to meet any additional requirements in the current financial year from resources already allocated. In December, we will consider the House's estimate for 2003–04, and will have the opportunity to make financial adjustments then. In the longer term, we will make any necessary provision in the three-year financial plans, which will be approved next summer.
	As for the staff, we must ensure that we remain good employers. That is a matter of concern, and my right hon. Friend referred to the Commission's strong involvement in that. If the House approves the motions before us, the proposals may well make life easier for many staff. If they do not, we must ensure that those staff are not disadvantaged or demotivated, and that services continue to be delivered to the present high standards. That is a priority for the Commission and the Board. If problems arise, they will be discussed with the staff affected and with the trade union side.

Patrick McLoughlin: Does the hon. Gentleman think that the new arrangements will reduce or increase the running costs of the House, bearing in mind the fact that the Leader of the House has said that the facilities that are currently open until 10 pm or 11 pm will remain open in the future?

Stuart Bell: I have already said that we will make any necessary provision in the three-year financial plans, which will be approved next summer, in the light of the decisions that the House makes tonight. If additional resources or staff are shown to be required in particular areas, we will provide them.
	My right hon. Friend also raised the question of how we can become more accessible to our constituents. He mentioned a glass-fronted gallery that would enable constituents to see hon. Members in action. The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) called it a glass menagerie. However we describe such a proposal, the fact is that earlier sittings of the House will limit constituents' tours on those days. Hon. Members will know—my right hon. Friend has confirmed this—that one of the Commission's announced strategic aims is to increase public access to the House and knowledge of its work. Non-sitting Fridays will make up some of the shortfall, but we are also costing Saturday opening for visitors, and we are discussing those matters with the authorities of the House of Lords.
	The long-term parliamentary calendar recommended in paragraph 74 of the Modernisation Committee's report would greatly help our long-term planning. I am sure that the House is pleased to hear my right hon. Friend's statement that provisional dates for recesses up to October next year will be announced in his business statement on Thursday. I know my right hon. Friend is well aware of the importance of ensuring that that is rolled forward every two months or so.
	I hope I have made clear the strong concern felt by the Commission and the House about the effects on staff, facilities and amenities of any decisions that we make today. That concern will continue in the light of any such decisions. I commend the views of the Commission to the House.

Peter Tapsell: Two of the most misleading words in the political dictionary are Xreform" and Xmodernisation". They are nearly always used to camouflage proposed changes with ulterior and concealed motives, and both therefore feature prominently on the cover of the report that we are debating.
	We do not need to agree with the grand old Duke of York that any change at any time is always for the worse to know for a fact that some changes are not for the better. As our constituents find in their personal lives, changes are indeed often for the worse.
	The House of Commons has been continually reforming and modernising its procedures and perquisites since Dick Crossman was Leader of the House in the 1960s. I remember listening to debates almost identical to this 40 years ago. When morning sittings were introduced they were a total flop: not only lawyers and stockbrokers like me but a great many Labour trade unionists and the like did not attend in the mornings. The Wilson Government quickly dumped the whole idea, and everyone agreed that Dick had been too clever by half. I hope that these proposals will have the same fate—although I do not think there is anyone quite as clever as Dick Crossman in the present Government.
	As the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) pointed out, the object of the exercise should be to improve scrutiny of the Government by Back Benchers. These proposals will have the opposite result. When I first arrived here, Ministers of all parties were genuinely in awe of the House of Commons. I am bound to say that I have never grown out of that myself.
	In his retirement, Harold Macmillan told me that he was seldom able to lunch before the then twice-weekly Prime Minister's Question Time, so tense did he always feel at the prospect of facing questions from the House. It would be encouraging to think that the proposal to take parliamentary questions before lunch was motivated by kindly considerations of that sort, but I very much doubt it. I am told that Ministers eat only sandwiches nowadays; moreover, their general behaviour demonstrates a complete contempt for the House and an absolute preoccupation with the media. That, in fact, is what lies behind all these proposals. Ministers have no great love of Parliament as an institution.
	The proposed batch of so-called reforms will undoubtedly make things worse. The imposition of a permanent maximum 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches will greatly increase the influence of the Executive and reduce the power of the Chamber.
	It is a mistake to assume, as someone did earlier, that all parliamentarians are equal. We are all equal in the sight of God, but we are not equal as parliamentarians. Some parliamentarians are very much abler and more experienced than others, as well as being better speakers. They are the ones whom the House and the country want to hear. The modern development whereby speakers are selected—largely by a computer, I understand—on the mathematical basis of how often they happen to have spoken during the current Session, rather than on the basis of whether they have a special contribution to make, is not desirable, and is one reason why the House is usually almost empty of all but those who think they will be called to speak.
	If we want to improve the standing of Parliament, we should understand that the hours during which we sit have almost nothing to do with it. What will determine Parliament's status are the personalities of those elected to this place: their distinction, their experience, their character, their independence and their capacity for oratory—heart-moving oratory. Since Tony Benn left the House, there is hardly anyone capable of producing that.

Anne Picking: Is not the fundamental purpose of our being here to represent our constituents, not to stand up and be windbags?

Peter Tapsell: As a matter of fact, I do think we must represent our constituents, but we do not do so by being dreary, ignorant bores.
	A rigid, universal 10-minute limit on speeches would have destroyed our parliamentary heritage. I know we will be reminded—it is astonishing that we have not been reminded already—of the sermon on the mount and the Gettysburg address; but although Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ could move the world in 10 minutes, most of us need a little longer.
	A great parliamentary speech is a work of art. It resembles a symphony: it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It must have light and shade, variations in tempo and tone, passion and wit, and sustained, serious intellectual content. It must concern an important issue on which there are strong, competing views in the House and in the country. I think of Wilberforce evangelising for the abolition of slavery, John Bright crusading for cheap food and free trade, Churchill pleading for rearmament, and Sydney Silverman, in my parliamentary youth, calling tirelessly for an end to hanging. All spoke from the Back Benches, and at length.
	There were many, many others—a whole great galaxy of parliamentary heroes, some of whom never reached the Government Bench, but whose voices still echo across the centuries. If they had been confined to 10-minute speeches we would never have heard of them, and Britain would long ago have gone down the plughole.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I call—

Peter Tapsell: I have hardly begun!
	Lloyd George advised the young Harold Macmillan not to say anything in the first five minutes of his speech, but to wait for the House to fill up. It is happening rather slowly this evening.

Bob Spink: Is my hon. Friend aware that he would also be allowed to respond to no more than two interventions during his speeches? As he has taken one from the hon. Member for East Lothian (Anne Picking) and one from me, I have now denied others—including the hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Bryant), who I see wants to make a comment—the right to intervene. What does my hon. Friend think about that?

Peter Tapsell: I think that I could have done even better without a second intervention.
	Let me now turn to the proposals for sitting hours. New Labour seems set on turning the House into a safe haven for nursing mothers and geriatrics like me. I do not presume to speak for the mothers, but I suppose I should be grateful: if we are never to sit after 7 pm, I see no obstacle—the Almighty and my electors permitting—to my remaining here for several more Parliaments. I may, like Lord Randolph Churchill, die by inches in public, but at least I will not—unlike the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint)—ever be tired.
	The proposed new working arrangements are rather nicely judged to be unsatisfactory for effective opposition, but inconvenient enough to prevent Back Benchers from pursuing a profession and gaining experience of what is rather slightingly called Xthe real world", or acquiring honestly—rather than by brown envelopes—that financial independence that can be such a bulwark of independent thought, speech and voting integrity. The proposed new hours are, in short, a charter for party political hacks.
	To develop the sensible point made by the hon. Member for East Lothian (Anne Picking), who intervened on my speech, the greatest merit of outside interests is that they enable a Member to maintain inside this House a proper perspective on the lives of the people whom he or she has been elected to represent. An MP cannot spend all weekend simply wandering around supermarkets in his or her constituency, much as I enjoy doing that. A competent MP needs to be able to put the interests of his or her constituents to the fore, in the context of the national scheme of things, and of the ever-growing international pressures of the modern world. To do that, he or she needs a great deal of experience that cannot be acquired just in this House, in its Corridors, or in the Rooms that used to be smoke filled.
	Ideally, we would all have much more experience than we have at the moment. However, for a whole variety of reasons that are inevitable in the modern world, many of us come into this place without the sort of experience that people had when I entered the House. A holder of the Victoria Cross, commanders of cruisers and brigades, major trade union leaders, chairmen of great companies and editors of great newspapers then sat in this House. All that has gone, and it is not going to come back, but we must not produce a way of life in this place that is attractive only to retired polytechnic lecturers.
	What are we all going to do after 7pm? [Hon. Members: XAh!"] Ideally, we would all return to the bosom of our family, but many of those bosoms are far away. The prospect of 650 parliamentarians suddenly released, like the prisoners in XFidelio", tramping the streets of London looking for vulnerable people to help, is one to which only a Hogarth could do full justice.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman's time, I am afraid, is up.

Anne Picking: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak after the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell). What an abysmal contribution that was; it has set us back mega. It is great to be able to stand up, posture, pontificate, show off and make a wonderful speech, but, as I said in my intervention, we are here to represent our constituents.
	The fact that I am even on my feet and speaking is overwhelming for me. Because of the pecking order and the current system, which is unfair, the opportunities for new Members to make contributions in this Chamber are very limited. I should be able to represent my constituents in East Lothian in the same fair and equal way that my hon. Friend the Father of the House is able to represent his constituents in West Lothian. If speeches are time limited, I and the other new Members who are trying to find their way and make a difference in this place—a place that we, too, are in awe of and respect—will be able to do that.
	The reason I ended up on the Modernisation Committee is a story in itself. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) was my replacement on the Select Committee on Transport, Local Government and the Regions after its vote last July. My reward for doing the honourable thing by falling on my sword was membership of the Modernisation Committee. I doubt whether a new MP would normally have that honour, and I have thoroughly enjoyed serving on it under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House.
	The Modernisation Committee seeks to make this Parliament relevant and engaging, and to increase the level of participation among elected Members of the House. What on earth is wrong with that? Rather than repeating what others have said, or trying to ensure that our speeches are heard back at the ranch or included in a press release, we should make disciplined contributions, and engage in meaningful debate and wholly proper and efficient democracy.
	I intend to be unique. I intend to make the shortest speech because I want to set an example, but before I finish I want to point out that the argument concerning carry-over versus genuine scrutiny does not make sense. If we want more genuine scrutiny, we must adopt carry-over. It is absolute nonsense to argue that legislation will be rushed through and that we will run out of time. I want far more time, so that there is proper scrutiny to ensure effective and efficient legislation.
	I hope that all other Members will adopt my policy of making short, sharp contributions. We should remember that this is an experiment—we do not have to get too worried about protecting the status quo. Let us try to do things differently. If the new method proves more effective, let us adopt it; if it does not, we can ditch it or change it. Nothing is set in stone. Just because the way in which we have worked over the years has been okay—just because we have eventually got there by dilly-dallying—that does not make it right. We have a duty to try to do our work more effectively. If we expect the firefighters to modernise in order to promote and provide better public services, what is wrong with us modernising to promote and provide better services for our constituents?

Patrick Cormack: I agree with the hon. Member for East Lothian (Anne Picking) on the subject of carry-over, and I do not agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth). I say that because I was the spokesman on constitutional affairs when Lord Norton produced his report, which I thought a wholly convincing document. It made admirable sense on that subject, and I shall certainly exercise my free vote in favour of the Leader of the House's proposal in this regard. Much of the report is refreshing, attractive and acceptable. For instance, I have no difficulty in supporting the proposal for September sittings. It is extremely difficult to make a logical case against that proposal, so I shall vote for it.
	I am not against so-called modernisation in all particulars. However, I do believe that if we are to change, it must be for the better, and I am troubled by a number of issues. I do not like the way in which the Government are going to abandon Fridays. We have little enough time in this House to debate issues on the Adjournment. Such issues may not be hugely contentious in political terms, but they are of great national importance and need discussing. To sacrifice Friday upon Friday is a profound mistake. Of course, I want a large number of Fridays to be devoted to private Member's legislation, but to get rid of all the others is, frankly, wrong.
	Nor do I like the arbitrary 10-minute limit on speeches. Here, I join forces with my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell), who made a marvellous, rumbustious speech. Would that he could have gone on for another 12 minutes. Mr. Speaker and his colleagues in the Chair—including you, Mr. Deputy Speaker—have the wonderful facility of decreeing time limits. Mr. Speaker decided on a 12-minute limit for today's speeches. Last week, he decided on an eight-minute limit. Sometimes he decides on a 10-minute limit, and on others he opts for a 15-minute limit. That seems the right, flexible approach. When a vast number of Members want to speak, we have to be cut down, but when they do not, it is entirely appropriate to allow us to develop our cases at rather greater length.
	I come to my principal argument against the recommendation on length of speeches. I am one of those Members who like to speak without notes. I like the spontaneity of debate, but when we are time limited it is impossible to maintain that spontaneity and to give way when one likes to do so.

Paul Tyler: I hope that the hon. Gentleman, with his usual fairness, has read the recommendations. A standard 10-minute limit on speeches is not proposed. The proposal is more elastic. It gives discretion to the Chair, but provides that the norm should be 10 minutes when there is pressure of time on a debate.

Patrick Cormack: The recommendations give very little discretion to the Chair. Frankly, the hon. Gentleman is one to talk: he rabbited on for 20 minutes today and finds it very difficult to keep to a limit.

Chris Bryant: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Patrick Cormack: No, as I want to develop my arguments and deal with the main point, which is my reason for opposing this recommendation. Those hon. Members who have been here for a long time know that I like to give way. I enjoy the cut and thrust of debate, and like to be able to answer interventions. That is a good thing to be able to do, but it is very difficult when one labours under a limit.
	I want to finish my speech in less than 12 minutes, so that other hon. Members can contribute. In the time left, I want to concentrate on the recommendation with regard to hours. It is true that, in the past, the House has sat at different times. It used to begin early in the morning in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, but in those days the Chamber was paramount. There were Committees, but nowhere near as many as now. In those days, hon. Members did not suffer from anything like as many conflicts, and their constituency work load was nowhere near as great as it is today.
	I enter my office never later than eight in the morning, but even then I find it difficult to cope with all the demands on my time so that I can get to the Chamber at 2.30 pm. The hon. Member for East Lothian, as she spends more time in the House, will find that she becomes more involved in a variety of matters. My work in the House has caused me to be involved with heritage bodies and other organisations, and I have found that people—reasonably and properly—want to see me. They want to discuss with me the issues in which they are involved, and I need to have time for them to do so.
	Moreover, I like to sit on Select Committees. At the moment, I am a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, but I had to say that I could not attend this afternoon's sitting. I consider the Chamber to be of paramount importance, and I felt that I had to be here for this debate. If we move to the new hours, that conflict of loyalties will be increased by factors of 10 or 100 for some hon. Members.
	There is nothing to be said in favour of moving to the proposed new hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I was not terribly happy about the change made to Thursdays, but it is now part of the parliamentary calendar and I accept it. I shall vote for the proposal that the House finish its business at 6 pm on Thursdays because I reluctantly accept that the House will not do away with the experiment.

Paul Farrelly: The hon. Gentleman is fair minded and independent, but the shadow Leader of the House has proposed that it is logical to start proceedings at 9.30 in the morning. Several hon. Members have cast aspersions on the motives of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) in apparently wishing to out-modernise the modernisers. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the right hon. Gentleman really believes that the House should sit at 9.30 am?

Patrick Cormack: I would no more seek to answer for my right hon. Friend than he would seek to answer for me. He must answer for himself. As I said during his speech, I disagree with him. I believe the proposal to start at 9.30 in the morning is profoundly wrong. I shall not support it, and I would not do so even if a three-line Whip were imposed.
	I believe that being a Member of Parliament is not a job. It is a way of life and a vocation to public service. We are not here to serve our personal convenience or to pander to the media's every demand. We are here to be the tribune of the people, and must serve at whatever hours are reasonable. I do not object to the move by the Leader of the House towards ending the practice of sitting very late into the night, but we are here to serve our constituents, as the hon. Member for East Lothian said, and to debate the great issues of the day. Most of all, we are here to hold the Government to account and to scrutinise legislation. We shall reduce our ability to do those things if we accept these recommendations.
	Some hon. Members have said that parliamentarians are not the flavour of the month, and that people do not attach to the Chamber the same importance that they once did. One reason for that is that hon. Members have become increasingly toothless over the years.
	I have made many speeches in the House—from the Opposition Dispatch Box and from both Opposition and Government Benches. I have criticised Governments of both parties. My right hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House is the best example in history of a gamekeeper turning poacher, but as a Minister he did not like to be held to account much. He was as brilliant on his feet as a Minister as he is as an Opposition spokesman, but circumstances change cases.
	I have been in the House for more than 30 years—not as long as my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle—and in that time Parliament has become increasingly subject to the whims and caprices of the Executive. If we approve the proposed changes, we shall be giving up many of our freedoms as Back Benchers. We shall reduce still further the Chamber's influence on the nation's affairs.
	Earlier, I mentioned the need to meet and talk to people from outside the House. I see nothing wrong with the possibility that some of those conversations might take place over lunch. Under the proposals, there will be no lunch hour. Those hon. Members who, like, me, want to be here on a Thursday, when the House sits at 11.30 am, have breakfast at about 11 and go through the day without a break. That happened last Thursday: many of us sat in the Chamber through the whole day as the House debated local government finance. The proposed hours will deprive many people outside the House of the opportunity to talk to and influence hon. Members. If we are truly to serve the people of the nation, we must be available much more readily than the proposals will allow.
	The Modernisation Committee's report is like the famous curate's egg—good in parts. Several of the proposals will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the parliamentary institution. I support those proposals wholeheartedly. However, if adopted, the limit on speeches and, more importantly, the change in hours would make Parliament much less influential in a relatively short period of time.
	There will be also knock-on effects for those who serve us here. They will not have quite the life that they have now. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) was right to speak about the unanimity of the Commission in wanting to do everything possible to cushion staff from the effects of change, but effects there will be and they will not be to those people's advantage. I urge hon. Members not to support those proposals.

Gerald Kaufman: The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) spoke about the House making greater contact with the electorate. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House spoke about how the House needed to reflect a rapidly changing society. The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) said that the electorate should not feel that we were out of touch with people and that what we did was irrelevant.
	If our constituents heard this debate, they would be amazed at its self-absorption and introversion. They want hon. Members to debate and decide the issues of the day. Some Labour Members will disagree with me but, regardless of what they and Opposition Members think, I believe that it is not our working practices that fail to engage with people or cause reduced polls in elections, it is what we in this House do and fail to do.
	People are worried about the legislation that we pass and the issues that we discuss. They do not care about amendments to Standing Orders that might turn one set of gobbledegook to another. They care about what we do. I stay in this House because I want to participate in changing the lives of my constituents for the better and to participate with colleagues in debating the issues of the day. That does not mean that I necessarily agree with my colleagues. In addition to being a legislature, this House is a forum. If it is a forum, it has to have proper debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) may say many things with which I disagree; my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Kelvin (Mr. Galloway), who is not here at the moment, may say many things with which I disagree; but it is essential that they have the chance to say them—and it is essential that they have the chance to say them in a way that could change minds in the House, but also communicate with people outside.
	I support many of the proposals, but I am worried that some will make a genuine exchange of ideas in the House less possible. My hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Anne Picking) spoke about the need for meaningful debate. She is absolutely right about that. Indeed, what is happening this very evening has given us an opportunity to witness the way in which meaningful debate in the House is being eroded and damaged. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) did not take interventions; other Members did not take interventions, even with compensatory time, because they cannot look at the digital clock the whole time. That being so, genuine debate in the House obviously calls for self-discipline. We do not necessarily want Members making speeches of 20, 30 or 40 minutes, but to confine them to an arbitrary time limit on the basis of a mandatory time limit, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House proposes, will damage genuine debate.

Chris Bryant: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Gerald Kaufman: No, I will not give way for the very reason that I am giving.
	We have in the Leader of the House one of the finest debaters I have listened to in the 32 years in which I have sat in the House of Commons. He would not have developed that reputation if there had been mandatory time limits when he was developing his skills as a speaker. My right hon. Friend knows the high regard in which I hold him, but it does look as though he is pulling up the ladder that he climbed and that others will be unable to climb it.
	Genuine debate requires an exchange of ideas. Genuine debate means that when I listen to an hon. Member, I may have my mind changed. If I cannot do that because I am looking at the digital clock the whole time, wondering about the length of the intervention and the length of my response, I am hobbled. I do not claim for a moment that my contributions to debates in the House are necessarily of any great value, but my constituents send me here to represent them. That means that I have things to say, whether or not those things are good or valid. That is for me to decide and for me to have a chance of trying. That is why I believe that the House will be making a serious error if it votes for mandatory time limits.
	Let us imagine it is 1938. Winston Churchill gets up: he inveighs against Chamberlain, he inveighs against appeasement, he inveighs against Hitler and he inveighs against Mussolini. He says that we must be prepared for a second world war. While he is developing his argument, Mr. Deputy Speaker says, XOrder. The right hon. Gentleman has come to the end of his 12 minutes." We cannot know when a speech is necessary and we cannot know when a speech may not be prolix but essential to the way the country operates. That is why I hope that the House will not vote for these mandatory time limits, but leave it instead to the discretion of the Speaker, although I would actually prefer even that not to happen.
	There is no way in which we will ever turn this House of Commons into a rational organisation comparable to other workplaces and activities in which people are employed. This place is sui generis—a large room in which people speak, listen to each other, change the laws of the country and revolutionise the country, as the Attlee Government did between 1945 and 1950. There is nothing like it—we cannot compare the way in which we conduct our activities with the very important work done in a motor car or computer factory. This is different. This is a House of Parliament. It is not a sausage machine or a conveyor belt. It is not here to be efficient. A Parliament is not about time and motion studies; it is about listening to views, perhaps conflicting, and, out of the clash of views, changing the way in which the country works and reflecting the views of its people. This is a Parliament, not a factory. It is not a debating society. That is where the former leader of the Conservative party went wrong—he thought that it was just a debating society, but that was not enough.
	If we lose sight of what we are here for, and believe that by having time limits we can hear more speeches and that by working from 9 to 5, or whatever it is, we will persuade our constituents that we are like them, we will fail. The very fact that we are here is because we want to represent our constituents, but we are not like them. If we were like them, we would not be here. If we were like them, we would not have fought to get here; we would not have done the things that got us here. We are sui generis—we are the British House of Commons. Although I support many of the proposals that my right hon. Friend makes and shall vote for them, I fear that the proposals on time limits and the change in hours will damage us as a House of Parliament, and I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will reflect on that.

George Young: It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). I agree with his theme that culture is more important than procedure, and I hope to return to that point in a moment.
	One needs to put the debate in the slightly broader context of the modernising agenda since 1997. The balance of the reforms so far have, in my view, made life easier for the Government. The automatic programming of every Bill, the introduction of deferred Divisions and the cut off at 10 o'clock may, incidentally, have made life more congenial for individual MPs as well, and I am not against that. However, the consequence has been to tilt what I call the terms of trade away from Parliament towards the Executive. We now need to tilt them back.

Helen Jackson: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that a large majority has something to do with it being easier for the Government than it was in the first Parliament to which I was elected?

George Young: I strongly believe that in the last Parliament the terms of trade shifted away from Parliament towards the Executive and made it easier for the Government to get their business through the House. The criteria by which I judge the reforms before us is what they do to those terms of trade.
	I find this a much more balanced package. There has been a genuine attempt to find and build a consensus, unlike what happened in the last Parliament, when the reforms were forced through using a parliamentary majority. I welcome the new tone and am able to support most of the proposals, with one exception.
	The most radical proposal has not been mentioned once in the debate. I refer to paragraph 44 of the report in which collective consultation with other parties is proposed on the Queen's Speech. That represents, or could represent, the first tentative steps towards prising the Government's fingers off the programme of the House. Many people believe that ownership of that programme ought to be here and not with the Government. So I welcome that proposal, and would like to know more about it. Will there be a Committee? Will Back Benchers be on it? Will the Executive have a built-in majority on that Committee? If this proposal represents the first step towards the House repatriating the ability to control its own business, I believe that it could be more important than many of the others.
	In principle, I am not opposed to carry-over. Like my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack), I accept the arguments in the Norton report that carry-over is a more sensible approach to the scrutiny of Bills and that we would get a better flow of legislation. When the Leader of the House winds up the debate, it would be helpful if he would confirm what I think was said in an exchange during the opening speeches: if there is disagreement between the two Houses at the end of a Session, this House cannot unilaterally carry over the disputed measure. As long as we have that safeguard, I shall be happy with the proposals for carry-over.
	I approached the question of an early start with an entirely open mind, but when I read that section of the Committee's report I found it one-dimensional and almost blinkered. Paragraphs 54 to 63 are nearly all about the Chamber—as if MPs did nothing else. In his introductory speech, the Leader of the House made the same mistake: he tended to discount what takes place in the morning. Only in paragraph 64 of the report is there an acknowledgement of life outside the Chamber. Then we hit this sentence:
	XChanges to the sitting hours in the Chamber will require consequential changes for other parliamentary procedures, such as meetings of Select Committees, Standing Committees and Westminster Hall."
	There are no real concessions there—no thinking through of the impact on the rest of the House.
	I shall briefly quote from appendix 1 of the first report of the Modernisation Committee's first report in December 1998. Paragraph 12 states that
	Xthe Government is not persuaded that a change of sitting hours to normal office hours is in the best interests of the House, individual Members or the Government."
	That was the evidence of the right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor), who was Leader of the House only four years ago—an unequivocal finding against the decision to move the times of sittings. There are some powerful paragraphs in that annexe whose impact has not faded.
	Mention was made of the impact on Ministers, who normally spend the mornings in their Departments or making contact with the real world. The report refers to the impact on constituency work—a point touched on by hon. Members in this debate. It states that morning sittings would be Xbound to detract" from Standing Committee and Select Committee meetings. It is unclear what has happened during the intervening four years to overturn those unequivocal recommendations from a former Leader of the House.
	A further, albeit subsidiary, point is that much of the business for Thursdays is unwhipped. On Thursday, we shall debate defence on a motion for the Adjournment of the House. Last Thursday, we debated local government finance on the Adjournment. If we stopped at 7 pm on Wednesdays and there was a tendency to schedule unwhipped business for Thursdays, some colleagues would be tempted to go home, compressing yet more business into two parliamentary days and generating unhelpful media comment.
	I am not unsympathetic to the case, but the consequences have not been fully thought through, nor has the case been fully made. I am not minded to support the option for a 9.30 start either.
	I welcome the move to greater topicality for departmental questions. I should have gone further and proposed a ten-minute period at the end of departmental questions for completely open questions. The Prime Minister tries to answer open questions about the Government for about half an hour each week so there is no reason that a Secretary of State, too, should not be expected to answer open questions for about ten minutes about the management of his or her Department. That would make the question session even more topical.
	A reform that I should have liked is alluded to in paragraph 80. Opposition parties should be able to trade in Opposition days for the right to demand a statement on a subject about which the Government are reticent. The report's proposals ensure prime time—in fact, even more time—for Government statements, although I question the assumption that such statements should last an hour, but it would have been fairer to balance that reform with the right of Opposition parties to demand a statement, also in prime time. That would have been consistent with holding the Government to account. Traditional Opposition days, even if they are taken as half days, do not represent the best use of Opposition time. We need a more flexible approach.
	I am unequivocally in favour of shorter speeches although I am open to persuasion as to how we would achieve them. Speech limits work well in the upper House where contributions tend to be focused. This Chamber should strive to be less like Radio 3 and more like Classic FM—a recommendation that may not find its way on to the BBC's XYesterday in Parliament" programme.
	The question is not whether a 15-minute speech is better than a 10-minute speech, but whether three 10-minute speeches add more value to the debate than two 15-minute speeches. The marginal utility of the last five minutes of a speech that could be shortened to 10 minutes is less than that of a fresh contribution that might otherwise be lost.
	There is a risk involved. We see it already. Members who realise that they will not get in will clamber aboard the opening speeches, which are not time-limited. Some Front-Bench speeches are far too long and if Back-Bench speeches are to be compulsorily, or voluntarily, shortened, we must have discipline from the Front Benches.
	Having spoken in favour of short speeches, I plan this to be one. The reforms will not dramatically change how we are perceived unless they are associated with what has been called Xcultural change"; it is not when we meet, but what we do when meet. Prime Minister's questions, for example, represent not the best but the worst of the House. Until we can change that event from a ridiculous alternation of the obsequious and the over-aggressive to a more focused exchange on one or two serious subjects, the public will say that it does not matter when we are in the Chamber but how we spend our time.
	Yes, procedural change is important, but it will not alter things of itself; cultural change is also necessary.

Lindsay Hoyle: It is a privilege to be a Member of Parliament and to be able to speak in the House. The debate is important, because we ought to set out where we stand on these issues. Many hon. Members want to put their case and it is important that we all have the chance to do so.
	I shall support my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin). It is essential that we put the facts as we see them.
	As we have the privilege to be Members of Parliament and to represent the voters who put us here, we should not be in this place out of self-interest. The problem with this debate, however, is that it is about self-interest, whatever we decide.
	We ought not to abuse the privilege that people have given us, but that will occur if we continue to reduce our hours. No doubt, I shall hear later that the proposals do not mean a reduction in our hours, but merely a change. I disagree. The reduction in hours will come. If we start earlier in the morning, instead of in the afternoon, something will have to be squeezed somewhere. That will be either a Select Committee or a House Committee. Some of us are members of both; we make up the numbers because other Members do not want to serve on Committees.
	What will the problems be? I am usually in the House before 9 am. Other Members have pointed out that they are in before 8. That is important because of our staff. The debate seems to have been all about us. Well, it should not be only about us; it should be about the people who work in this place and the people who work with us—the forgotten people. We find it easy to forget them, yet we make many demands on their time.
	When we come in at 9 o'clock, there is mail to go through. We have to check the questions for that day, read the Order Paper and the newspapers. We have to consider what is relevant to the constituents we represent and what the people who work with us do for the rest of the day. There is work to be done first thing in the morning.
	Then we might go on to a meeting of the Catering Committee, which begins at 9.30, or to a Select Committee that starts at 10. Those meetings are held in the mornings. It is important not to squeeze time, so that we continue to have the choice to take part in such meetings without giving up something else.
	We were rightly told that Westminster Hall was a privilege when it was instituted. It is right that we can decide to speak in Westminster Hall in the morning without missing something in this Chamber, but if the reforms go ahead, we shall face challenges. Where will our time be spent?
	It is wrong to say that we shall not lose time due to the proposals. We shall obviously lose time. That is what worries me.

Chris Bryant: There were several occasions when I took part in debates in my hon. Friend's name in Westminster Hall, on issues such as Gibraltar, when I had to choose between attending a Select Committee sitting or Westminster Hall. Do not all of us spend a great deal of our time choosing between different elements of our parliamentary responsibilities? Of course the day will not get shorter or longer as a result of these changes, but the important thing is to try to make it possible for the public to understand what we do in this place, and continuing until 10 o'clock at night makes little sense to them.

Lindsay Hoyle: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, because some might argue that it was not his choice to go to Westminster Hall but that he was instructed to go there, and that is what we all remember about those debates; so I do not think that he should get away with that quite so easily.
	We do make choices as to how we allocate our time, and this debate is about those choices. We have made major changes in the House, and they have made it easier for Members. I think that 10 o'clock is the right time to end on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. There are genuine reasons for finishing earlier on a Thursday. I represent a constituency in the north-west. Whatever form of transport one chooses to take—the Virgin west coast main line, the motorways or whatever—the north-west is not the easiest place to get to in the British Isles. In fact it seems to be one of the hardest journeys to make at the moment. But it is important that we are seen to be working hard in the House on behalf of our constituents. That is so relevant and so important to them and we should not lose sight of it.
	Many Members will wish to push their case and I respect every Member's views because they are all based on valid reasons, but I remind them that we represent those who work in the police and the health service, and others, who are on call 24 hours a day and work unusual hours. Have they the right to change their hours? No. They are on a contract; they are expected to work to it. They are expected to work to the hours that they are given on the rota. Surely we should respect the hours that we have put into the House, not change them to make things easier for ourselves.
	We should be considering the people that work with us and the people that work in the House. I have not noticed anyone putting the case on behalf of the people who work with us and I certainly have not heard many people make a strong case about the staff that work in the House, who are very important as well. What do they wish to see coming out of this modernisation? Surely case studies of the people that work in this place should have been brought to us first instead of being presented after we have taken the decision.

Paul Tyler: Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that our staff like us to stay here until 10 or 10.30 at night?

Lindsay Hoyle: I am not sure how well the hon. Gentleman treats his own staff, who work with him. I think of people as working with me, not for me; I believe that it is a team that works together, so I always find it interesting when people say Xwho work for us". We should say, Xthe team that work with me". I meet them at 9 in the morning. They go off. They do not work until 10 o'clock at night; far from it.
	The danger is that pressure will be brought to bear on the staff that work with us. If Members are in Committee at 9 in the morning, when will they meet their staff? Will it be at 7, 8 or 9 o'clock at night? That is the weakness of the case that has been made by the hon. Gentleman; I should have thought better of him. Those are the people that we should start looking to. The problem is that we are always looking to what we want.

Stuart Bell: I repeat the commitment that I gave as Commissioner: that we will of course take great interest in the future of the staff, whatever decisions are taken by the House tonight.

Lindsay Hoyle: Surely it is better to take the views of the staff first, rather than what we decide in the House tonight. At least we should be taking a more enlightened decision if we began to understand what the staff views are, because they are important. I should have expected the trade unions to submit a paper to the Leader of the House. The GMB represents some workers in the House. I do not know whether it has sent a paper to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House stating those workers' views, but I should have thought that it would have been beneficial to know what the people who make the House tick think. The great danger is that it is always about us, and the self-centredness of MPs becomes very apparent.

Martin Salter: My hon. Friend does not appear to be aware that the original memorandum from the Leader of the House has been out for consultation since December last year, and the Board of Management of the House of Commons has commented on it. The idea that that proposal has been railroaded through is untrue.

Lindsay Hoyle: I did not say that; let me explain more slowly. I am serious about this, because the staff are important. There are many letters in the report, expressing many views, but they are from Members of Parliament. What I do not see is the opportunity for staff in the House to send a letter and for that to be reproduced, like our correspondence. It is a shame that we do not have the views of the staff that work here and of the unions that represent them. Those views have not become apparent to us; they certainly have not been given to us. It would have been beneficial if they had been.

David Hamilton: Surely my hon. Friend is not arguing that members of staff should be working long hours. Surely the argument should be that we should be paying them decent wages and giving them a decent contract to work for us. It is argued that we should be pushing staff towards longer hours along with us. That is wrong, surely.

Lindsay Hoyle: My hon. Friend is absolutely right; that is why I have raised that point. I am making the opposite argument to the one that he supposes; let me explain it in a way that we should all understand. At the moment, people who work in the House have split shifts. The great temptation will be to move to one shift. We shall then be putting pressure on staff to stay a little bit longer to accommodate the Members of the House. The danger is that we shall be extending their hours, not reducing them.

Linda Gilroy: My hon. Friend is very generous in giving way. I wonder whether, among the views that he has read in the report, he read a submission by the Equal Opportunities Commission, which comments that business and industry leaders have in the past pointed out the irony of the situation whereby Ministers and other MPs speak to them about the advantages of work-life balance while current parliamentary practices make it impossible for Ministers to practise that themselves.

Lindsay Hoyle: That is right. It is always interesting to see that we do represent one another and to note the views that are expressed. There is a widely held view that we shall be putting pressure on Ministers as well if we are not careful. If we contain the hours, some constituencies will lose the benefits of ministerial visits because Ministers will be under constraints forcing them to be in the House. That is a weakness. In ministerial terms, Lancashire seems to be the colonies of this country; it is rare for Ministers to come that far north. It will become impossible, I stress, to persuade Ministers to come that far north in future unless we have a conference there.

Stephen O'Brien: I associate myself with the hon. Gentleman's remarks and include Cheshire with Lancashire in that respect. I have just taken a straw poll in the Tea Room, of the staff, and they are all very much hoping that they will be able to retain the current hours, for precisely the reasons that the hon. Gentleman has so ably outlined.

Lindsay Hoyle: I welcome that intervention. It is important that we ensure that the jobs of those people, who look after us so well, are not under threat. There is a great danger that if these proposals are approved tonight, those jobs will be under threat, and I certainly do not want to be associated with people losing their jobs.

Angela Browning: It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle). Many of us can concur with the common sense with which he makes his case. There is much in the proposals presented by the Leader of the House with which I can agree. I should like to mention those before coming to the ones that cause me more concern.
	Pre-legislative scrutiny is most welcome, and I think that we would all like to see that extended as much as possible. The Leader of the House mentioned the tabling of questions, possibly using electronic methods. I support that, given the necessary safeguards. Technically, I cannot see why those safeguards cannot be introduced. I do not agree with the proposal that came from my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) about fingerprinting. I would not be very comfortable about handing over my fingerprints to the Conservative Whips Office. However, if we might use electronic signatures, as would happen in a business environment, to protect our security, I am sure that electronic tabling would be feasible.

Nicholas Winterton: It was not our proposal.

Angela Browning: I am relieved to hear that.
	A test should be applied: does each of the proposals before us tonight strengthen the opportunity for Back Benchers to scrutinise and challenge what the Executive is bringing forward? Some of the proposals not only do not advance that cause, but take it further back, so I oppose them.
	The first of those proposals is that on the general change to the sitting hours of the House. Many people have given reasons why they do not believe that that should take place. I do not subscribe to the idea that, somehow, out there among the wider electorate, there is the belief that changing the fact that the House of Commons sits until 10 o'clock at night will enhance turnout figures at elections or people's perception of us.
	It is indicative that, in the opening statements and elsewhere, the impression has somehow already been given to people on the outside who may have no idea of parliamentary procedures that we do not have that much of importance to do in the mornings, yet we all know that we may be attending Select Committee or Standing Committee sittings, or just doing our constituency work or other work that interests us in the House.
	I particularly like to use mornings to see people on a one-to-one basis. I am not a great believer in the working lunch; I would rather people came in for an hour and made their case over a cup of coffee. I prefer information to be brought to me in that way, yet the opportunity to do that would be curtailed if the House were to sit earlier. I certainly would not expect many of the organisations, charities and people who come to see me to make their case to do so in the evening after the House had risen at 7 o'clock, and I am concerned about that restriction.
	I am also concerned about written statements unless they represent a genuine alternative to the planted written question. Many hon. Members have experienced the anomaly of raising with a Minister something particular to their own constituency only to find that the issue is dealt with in a planted written answer to a question asked by a Member whose constituency is hundreds of miles away and who cannot possibly have a constituency interest in the matter. If the proposal were intended to tidy that up, I would have no problem with it. That would be a very sensible move forward. However, I would be concerned if the proposal were intended to let Ministers off the hook by allowing them not to appear at the Dispatch Box to answer questions from Members of Parliament.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield expanded on written questions to Ministers during his work with the Procedure Committee, and they are of genuine concern to all of us. I table named day questions, but not more than five a day. I do so because it is becoming more and more difficult to get a timely response to letters sent to Ministers on important constituency matters. One would expect the Cabinet Office rules to apply. They state that Members should receive replies from most Departments in 21 days, but I am sure that the Leader of the House will have noticed that many of us are forced to table written questions simply to chase up answers to letters sent to Departments.
	I had to table such a question only last week, seeking a response to a very straightforward letter that I first sent in May to the Department of Health. I had chased that letter in June and again on 1 September, but I had to table a named day question as soon as the House returned after the summer recess to receive an answer.
	I hope that the Leader of the House will take account of that in any change to tabling questions and the way in which we can question Ministers in a written format and orally, because there is huge frustration, certainly among the Opposition, at the rather sluggardly way in which Departments respond to questions and correspondence from Members of Parliament.
	Although I support in principle the changes to the sitting hours, particularly those involving the summer recess and the House returning in September—I hope that we will know whether it will be for two or three weeks—one of the reasons given for those changes is that, if there were a need to recall Parliament, there would be an obvious window of opportunity to debate urgent matters that occur during the long summer recess. However, we should look much more seriously not only at the summer recess, particularly in relation to Departments being able to handle written questions, but at the need to recall Parliament.
	The proposed war against Iraq arose almost immediately at the end of the summer term this year, but I have absolutely no doubt that the House would not have been recalled if it had not been for the actions of the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) and many other colleagues who arranged for Members of the House to convene outside the House under the chairmanship of former Speaker Weatherill to debate a matter of great importance to them. I agreed to participate, and I am told that 50 per cent. of all hon. Members indicated that they would attend that meeting in Church House. That would have been a great embarrassment to the Government, as I am sure the Leader of the House would agree. Back Benchers should not be forced to go to those lengths to get the Prime Minister to ask the Speaker to reconvene the House when a matter of such national importance is before us.

Nicholas Winterton: Would it reassure my hon. Friend to know that the Procedure Committee may well undertake an inquiry into that matter during the next Session? We have received a number of representations, and I hope that it does not frighten the Leader of the House in any way to say that we believe that it falls within our terms of reference.

Angela Browning: I am comforted by that information, and I hope that the Leader of the House will be as receptive to the Procedure Committee's recommendations as he has been to other matters.
	I wish to move on to matters in which I was involved in a previous incarnation that are before us again tonight: guillotines, programme motions and deferred voting. I must tell the Leader of the House that I am very concerned to hear flexibility in programme motions used as a bargaining chip. I stood at the Dispatch Box opposite the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Margaret Beckett) when she forced programme motions and deferred voting on the House, and my clear understanding was that there would be flexibility.
	We were given many assurances—they are all in the record of the House—and the Government promised in introducing those proposals that there would be automatic flexibility and that they would listen to the official Opposition in arranging programme motions for each Bill. So it is a matter of concern that, somehow, that flexibility is promised only if others are prepared to go along with other proposals before the House tonight, and I ask the Leader of the House to reflect very seriously on that. I shall regard it as a broken promise if the promise that he is now making, which was not honoured by his predecessor, is used as a bargaining chip for other matters.
	I have reservations about the carry-over of incomplete Bills, and I am waiting for the Leader of the House to reassure me during his winding-up speech that that proposal will not be used just to enable the Government to push through controversial legislation that has been blocked in another place.
	I do not think that the work of the House will be enhanced, or made more effective or more popular simply by changing the sitting hours of the House. It is not my intention to support the right hon. Gentleman's motion to bring forward the work of the House during the week to 11.30, but equally, for the same reason, I cannot support it beginning at 9.30 in the morning either, so I warn my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) that I shall not support his proposal.

Stephen Hesford: May I begin what I hope is a short speech by referring to what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Anne Picking), who is not in her place now, as she suggested the way forward? My hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) said that there was an element of self-indulgence in some of this, and I agree, having listened to some of the contributions so far. However, I am open to doubt about whether it is self-indulgence for the reasons that he mentioned or whether it is a question of self-importance. Should we not focus on what is effective, relevant and representative?
	Listening to the views of some of my constituents, I do not believe that defending some of the traditions of the House speaks for them. When they come up to me at constituency meetings, they ask, XStephen, how often are you down there? You work through the night, do you? You are there till 10 o'clock." They do not mean, XYou're my hero, you're fantastic, what stamina you must have, I voted for you because you're a muscle man"—[Laughter.] The House has reformed its procedures over the years, as has been mentioned. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), who is no longer in his place, said that changing the practices in this place would not make us more representative. I disagree. It would make us more recognisable to the people out there whom we represent.
	Some of the major changes in Parliament, such as guillotining of business, were made in the 19th century. I am sure that, in debates at the time, Members claimed that an ancient tradition of Parliament was being taken away. The then Liberal Government introduced programming motions and guillotines to deal with Irish Members—Parnell and others—who were filibustering simply to gum up business. It cannot be right that the House cannot reform itself. That is the purpose of the proposals, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and all those involved on bringing them forward. This may never have been a popular subject in the House, certainly among those who have served here for many years, perhaps for a good reason—perhaps a feeling of loss, because it is what they knew as lads—but I say, XGet a life, move on, let's modernise ourselves."
	The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) made what was, in some senses, an entertaining speech, but it did not entertain me; nor did it entertain some of my hon. Friends. He talked about Members who spoke with distinction, and he named three people, all of whom were men.

Robin Cook: He couldn't stand Thatcher.

Stephen Hesford: My right hon. Friend says that the hon. Gentleman could not stand Thatcher, and many people in the House would agree with that sentiment.

Bill Wiggin: Sexist.

Stephen Hesford: The hon. Gentleman says that that is sexist, but sadly, the speech of the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle, which might otherwise have been considered entertaining, contained an element of sexism. It was an old-fashioned lads' speech about a lads' club that should not be changed.

Stephen O'Brien: The hon. Gentleman will recall that I had the privilege of listening to his extensive contribution on the Mersey Tunnels Bill recently. It was an example of a particular type of speech, which, I am glad to say, is not overused in this House. He nearly persuaded me to join him in the Lobbies on the issue of very short speeches.

Stephen Hesford: I am not sure what the relevance of that intervention was.
	I want to pick up on two other matters, and I shall not repeat what other Members have said. One is from personal experience—mention was made of me going to the gym. As Members may know, I broke my leg earlier this year while playing for the parliamentary football team—

Angela Browning: How many women are in the parliamentary football team?

Stephen Hesford: The hon. Lady may be surprised to know that there are several women in the squad.
	In terms of notice for oral questions, I agree that the time limit of 10 working days or two weeks should be shortened. When I was incapacitated and had to rest in my constituency, my constituents were saying seriously, XStephen, you can't go down there, you can't travel, you can't move. How can you take part?" The answer, even in the 21st century, was that I could not take part, although I could table written questions. I suggest that in these days of video links, telephone conferencing and so on—this goes beyond the recommendations, so, in some ways, I am saying that the recommendations do not go far enough—

Eric Forth: Come on.

Stephen Hesford: The shadow Leader of the House says XCome on", but let us think about dragging ourselves into the 21st century.
	My main point is that if we do not reform ourselves, we do not make ourselves relevant to members of the public outside. I want to argue that point particularly in relation to female representation—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) says from a sedentary position that that is rubbish. Would she like to intervene and explain why?

Angela Browning: It is rubbish because men have families, too, and fathers in families are just as important as mothers.

Stephen Hesford: I am sure that the hon. Lady will agree—I thought that the Conservatives had realised this, being more caring and sharing these days—that her party needs more female candidates and more ethnic minority candidates. One of the reasons people are put off being Members of Parliament is the lifestyle.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: Will my hon. Friend tell me how many seats there are in which the Labour party has difficulty in assembling a shortlist of candidates when there are vacancies?

Stephen Hesford: It is a question not of assembling a shortlist but of translating that into female representation in the House.

Geraldine Smith: Is my hon. Friend suggesting that female Members do not want to work long hours? When I became a Member of Parliament, I realised that it was much more than a job—it was a way of life. My constituents come first. We should not be trying to cram all our business into shorter hours, as we will lose out, particularly if we go ahead with the proposals for Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

Stephen Hesford: I have only a minute left, and I want to draw the House's attention to a letter—I do not know whether every Member received it, but I hope that they did—sent out by the chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission.

Eric Forth: Oh!

Stephen Hesford: Why does the right hon. Gentleman make a male chauvinist representation on all these issues? [Interruption.] I am sure that he will regard that as a compliment. The letter, from Julie Mellor, says that Members' attendance for the debate could mean
	Xthe difference between allowing these important changes to take place or leaving Parliament where it is, with 19th century patterns of business and membership."
	That would be a great lost opportunity to expand the representation in this Parliament.

Edward Leigh: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford), who, I suppose, has proved why we need a time limit on speeches. I do not understand what he was going on about when he said that he was not able to speak in this place. I broke my leg in two places last week, and I am still managing to speak. It is not that difficult. I agree that the Opposition Benches are not exactly filled with retired VCs and major-generals, but we can still hop along and make a speech.
	May I say to the Leader of the House that his appointment was a brilliant one? He is proving to be one of the best Leaders of the House that we have ever had. He is totally committed to this place. He loves it, as we all do. I have been here for only 19 years compared to his 30, and I will surprise him by saying that I agreed with much of what he said.
	Quite a lot of myths have been expressed in the debate. We have heard some very good and amusing speeches. For example, we heard from the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), and it is true that Winston Churchill made some truly tremendous speeches, but most of them were delivered when he was Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition, so they would not have been affected by the proposed time limit. Let us be realistic. In the 1930s, when he spoke on the Government of India Act 1935 and on other matters, he spoke to a House that was nine tenths empty.
	However, I accept the right hon. Gentleman's point—I hope that the House will take it on board—that there will be occasions when a limit should not apply. For example, in a defence debate on a matter of national security it would be absurd to limit a Back-Bench speech from a former Defence Secretary to eight or 10 minutes and perhaps prevent him from making a valuable contribution based on his personal experience. Mr. Speaker and his Deputies must have discretion to allow some Members to speak at greater length.

Chris Bryant: When Winston Churchill spoke in the 1930s he was a Privy Councillor, so he was not subject to the 10-minute rule that operated for much of the 1930s. In fact, he was able to speak from the Front Bench.

Edward Leigh: That is a fair point. At that stage, Winston Churchill already had enormous experience, and the example underlines the point that I am making. There will be occasions when Members of particular experience should be allowed latitude.
	We have all sat through debates in which the Whips have run out of the doors of the Chamber to look for people to speak to deliberately fill out the debate. Let us not delude ourselves: Parliament is not working—most of the time the Chamber is empty. There has been a flight of interest from the Chamber—and not just from the general public, but from Members of Parliament. That might be the result of our procedures or may be to do with the fact that we all have offices and televisions and many of us sit on Select Committees. That is the reality, but let us at least try to get debates that are topical and to the point and in which Members give brief résumés of what they believe. One can give a great speech in 10 minutes. How long was the Gettysburg address—three, four or five minutes? If one chooses one's language carefully, one can make a great speech.

Linda Gilroy: Does the hon. Gentleman not think that in today's conditions Churchill would have been able to rise to the challenge of giving a short speech on the important topics of the day?

Edward Leigh: That is what I said. I am sure that Churchill would have done so.
	I believe that the Leader of the House has generally got it right. On most occasions, for most speeches, from most Back Benchers, 10 minutes is enough. If that gives younger Members more chance to get in, that is all to the good. It is frustrating for hundreds of them—mainly those on the Government side—who can hardly ever take part in a debate.

Stephen McCabe: I certainly accept the hon. Gentleman's point about short speeches, but would not time-limited speeches tend to reduce Members' willingness to take interventions? That, in itself, would limit debate. Instead of debate, we would have a series of 10-minute statements.

Edward Leigh: I have already given way three times in my speech, because I notice that the Clerk stops the clock each time that I do so. If we pass the reforms, there is the suggestion that speakers will have injury time. We should speak for 10 minutes, and the more interventions we take, the more interesting our speeches will be. If we are given injury time, that is all to the good. That suggestion is in the proposals, so I do not accept the point that time limits will lead to sterile debate.
	I am normally a great admirer of the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs—he is a superlative parliamentarian—but I did not understand his argument on sitting hours. It was not one of his better speeches. What was the point that he was trying to make? He said that, as Chairman of the Committee, he was approached by members of the press who told him that there was no point in the Committee meeting after 4 o'clock because it would not be reported. It now meets in the morning, but he suggests that the Chamber should meet in the afternoon. There is no logic to his point.
	David Hencke of The Guardian came to the Public Accounts Committee and told us that, since Gladstone's time, the Committee had always met at 4 o'clock on Monday and Wednesday. Our hearings are virtually never reported, and that is the honest truth. We get plenty of reportage about our reports on the National Audit Office and of some of my comments, but our hearings are very rarely reported, because they are at 4 o'clock. David Hencke said that there was no point in our meeting at that time in the afternoon. The modern deadlines of the modern press world dictate that, unless one deals with a real item of news, what one says after 4 o'clock will never be reported.
	What is the point of our being here and pretending that what we say at this time—7.36 pm—will be reported in tomorrow's national newspapers? How many Back Benchers now present have had their speeches reported recently, even in the broadsheets? The answer is precious few. It may be that even if they speak at 11 am, they will not be reported—that is probably true—but there is at least a chance that they will be.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) gave one of his marvellously entertaining speeches. He said that we must go out and work during the day as barristers, trade union leaders, members of the regular armed forces and that sort of thing. That is great, but how many former regular Army officers, with one great exception whom we all know, sit on the Opposition Benches? How many distinguished lawyers are on our Benches? There are very few. I see a lot of retired special advisers on these Benches. I am not criticising them, but that is the reality.
	There is the myth that, if we can only keep our current hours, we will draw in great talent such as captains of industry, trade union leaders and distinguished barristers. However, they are not coming here, because we do not pay them enough. They earn too much outside and do too big a job. The reason that they do not come here has nothing to do with our hours. Let us leave aside the myth, because the truth of the matter is that, sadly, the House is primarily composed of full-time professional politicians. We must dispense with the illusion that we live in the Victorian age and that we all go out during the day to get to know the real world. I wish that were true, but it is not.

Eric Forth: Can my hon. Friend give an example of what he thinks is a model legislature or Parliament that attracts the attention, support and enthusiasm of its voters?

Edward Leigh: My right hon. Friend makes a very wise point. He is right. All over the world, interest is flying away from elected Parliaments. Whether one considers the Senate, which is non-confrontational, or the Australian Parliament, which is very confrontational, one sees that there is less and less interest. That is to do with the fact that our societies are very affluent. Certainly in the House, the two political parties are drawing closer together and there is not the great divide of class or the huge areas of poverty that there were in the past. All that is true, but it has nothing to do with the question of whether we meet at 9.30 am, 11.30 am or 2.30 pm. They are facts of life. Let us, at least, try to fight back.
	We can live in the past and say that the procedures that we adopt now should remain the same as they have been for 100 years. We can give speeches of 20 or 30 minutes of very little relevance and delivered by people who do not understand the subject, who have been tapped on the shoulder by a friendly Whip and who speak in the hope that they will be promoted. We can make those speeches at 7.30 in the evening. It is all very cosy, but what does it achieve?

Stephen O'Brien: My hon. Friend makes it clear that he is saddened by the move to an increasing number of professional politicians, which is reflected in the proposal to sit earlier. Bearing in mind the fact that some of us have a manufacturing background, does he think that his approach will help to widen the composition of the House or merely to enshrine it, which would be the result of adopting the proposals that he seems to advocate?

Edward Leigh: That is a fair point. As someone who had a real career outside the House, my hon. Friend is an exception to the rule. I wish we were encouraging more people like him, but we are not and we must live with that reality.
	I have one last point to make on Committees. There is a great myth that we used to have wonderful Standing Committees. What we actually had was loads of filibustering. We wasted 100 hours in the early weeks of a Committee. In 18 years of Labour opposition, how many Bills did they stop by using that great parliamentary power of delaying legislation? Labour Members can intervene if they like.
	We used to debate Cromwell's statue. It was meaningless. We need timetabling if we are to move with the real world. However, if I support the Leader of the House to that extent, will he at least acknowledge that much of the timetabling has been draconian and that we need co-operation between the two Front Benches so that we get a decent debate? In the last Parliament, a Bill's Committee stage, Second Reading, Report and Third Reading were held on one day, which was absurd.
	The Leader of the House is a genuine parliamentarian. He is trying to change the approach and to get agreement, and he is broadly doing the right thing. I support him on limiting speeches generally, on timetabling and on Parliament meeting early in the day so that there is a chance that when we speak the nation will listen.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: I have been sitting here feeling deeply deprived. I go through my correspondence during the day and sit in my constituency surgeries at the weekend, and it is obvious that I have a unique, special and different electorate. I have always known that, but it has now been demonstrated. They talk to me about the laws on social security, education, housing and immigration, but somehow or other, and I cannot understand why, over the past 30 years no one has come to me and said, XI will not vote for you if you stay in the House of Commons after 10 o'clock at night." I have obviously been desperately deprived because what they say to me is, XThis is a bad law. It affects me in this way. Go and do something about it", and they expect me to go and do something about it.
	I am sorry that the Leader of the House is not in the Chamber. I am sure that that has nothing to do with the fact that I have just risen to speak. I have read some of his suggestions carefully. They include:
	XModernisation is about enabling MPs to do a more effective job for their constituency and for the country"
	and that the new Thursday working hours were a success because they enabled
	Xstatements to take place in the morning when parliamentary scrutiny is more likely to influence the media agenda."
	Not Members of Parliament, just the media agenda.
	I have carefully scrutinised some of the gifts on offer from the Leader of the House. Sadly, I begin to detect that some of them come with slightly dubious origins and even more dubious benefits. For example, a number of radical and important changes were made in the last Parliament, every one of which had the direct effect of limiting something. Timetabling limits the opportunity of the Opposition to comment on legislation in an effective way. Timetabling of speeches limits the opportunity of Back Benchers to intervene and comment.
	All those suggestions have to be considered carefully, and I ask myself one question: who benefits from the changes? Is it the House of Commons? Will we get better legislation? Where in the suggestions is there a drive to give Select Committees the right to debate their reports on the Floor of the House? Where is it suggested that Members of Parliament should have the opportunity to initiate legislation?
	Members who have not been here for long—I used to hate people who said that—might not know that we had the right to initiate not just private Members' Bills, but motions to debate political subjects and to get a vote on them. Perhaps they do not understand the terrible power that has been taken away from them. On Friday we could debate important subjects and get a vote of the House. If 300 or 400 Members managed to stay here on Friday, as they did, and register their opinion on abortion, reform of the laws on homosexuality and other contentious issues important to their constituents, it was guaranteed that the Government of the day would take that seriously. They might not like it and go around exercising considerable pressure on the Members of Parliament who had registered their votes and views, but they took note of them. Now we do not have that opportunity.
	Motions are not voted on. Everything that is contentious can be discussed in a debate on the Adjournment of the House. I have never worked out the socialist position on the Adjournment of the House, but I am happy to debate it at inordinate length. What I do know, however, is that that procedural change means that Members of Parliament who once had the opportunity to influence the Government have not got that chance today.
	If I thought that tinkering with the hours would give Back Benchers a new power that would reinvigorate the Chamber and debate within Parliament, I would not only support my right hon. Friend but would be well ahead of him. I would be out there, drawing people into the Lobby, saying, XThis is the best thing that's ever happened." But I will not be doing that because we have to judge the suggestions against what has already happened.
	When my Select Committee was grandiose and large, one half of it used the pre-selective system to look carefully at local government finance. Much detailed work went into that. Committee members spent many hours of considerable importance reading documents and talking to members of local authorities and taking evidence from them. Her Majesty's Government took about as much notice of that work as if it had been written in Greek, and I do not think that many speak Greek even in this Cabinet.
	It is suggested that all legislation will be in a form that will allow us to assess its importance. We will have a huge impact and be able to change it before it comes before us as a Bill. I have to say that I am slightly unsure whether that is the case. I have also considered other suggestions and applied them to my Select Committee. The Leader of the House watched with some interest what happened when the Committee wanted to take evidence from Lord Birt and others who not only had important parts to play in the legislation that we were examining, but had influenced matters. For example, Treasury Ministers were negotiating the contracts that my Committee was considering, but we were told that we did not have the power to insist on them appearing in front of us. We were told that they were simply advisers and outwith the parliamentary system. If the motion reformed that practice, I would be way ahead of the Leader of the House.
	Let us get rid of the idea that these proposals are intended to benefit the female of the species. Nothing proposed by male parliamentarians is for the benefit of the female of the species, no matter which political party those males represent. Changing the hours will do nothing to change the representation of women in this place; no artificial means will do that. We belong to a voluntary party, and the only way to get good female candidates is to persuade the people whom they want to represent that they are capable of doing the job. They have had no difficulty doing so in the past, and they will have no difficulty in future.
	People say, of the change to the hours, that after seven o'clock we will be able to have a life of our own. I have never had any difficulty in having a life of my own. There are those who say, XOf course, you would be able to stay here, in the Dining Room." I remember Barbara Castle, when she retired, saying to all the assembled members of the parliamentary Labour party, XI am not going to thank you for the friendship because, to be perfectly honest, it's been a bit uneven."
	The people who vote for us do so because they think that we can have an effect. It would be nice if they voted for us because of the size of our hips or the kind of accent that we have, but they do not. They vote for us because we put before them a programme with which they identify, and they expect us to keep to it and to demonstrate that any law passed in this House is workable, is responsible, is not unfair and is properly drafted. When we understand that and we prove to the people of the United Kingdom that that is really what we are doing, we will not lack support for our political institutions and we will not have difficulty finding people who want to listen to what we say.
	The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) says that Select Committees do not get any publicity if they sit in the afternoon, so they cannot do so. I have to tell him that I chair a Select Committee that has managed to get quite a lot of coverage, and it meets at half-past 4 in the afternoon. It gets publicity because we talk to people about matters that they want to know about, and we put those matters into the public domain.
	I came here to create laws, not to create a nice little timetable that would enable me to try to find a hairdresser after seven o'clock at night. I came here to influence political views. If we are really serious, my Government, of all Governments, should be saying to Labour Back Benchers that in future they will give every one of us much more power to question Ministers and to insist on statements—the things that are not in these proposals. If the Government were serious about that, every Labour Member would be in the Lobby behind them.

Bill Wiggin: There probably is no better example of why speeches should not be time-limited than the contribution by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), the Chairman of what was the Transport, Local Government and the Regions Committee when I was a member. On the other hand, having heard the efforts of the hon. Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford), I can see that 10 minutes can be too long, and having a time limit may keep people on their feet for longer than they should be.
	I wanted to speak today because I am an extraordinary person: I am somebody whose father was a Member of the House, so I speak on behalf of the children of Members. That is why I believe that there is great validity in the proposals put forward by the Leader of the House. When people accuse us of being stupid for sitting here late into the night, we have a duty to our electors to defend ourselves against those accusations and to live in the real world—I must say that I find it difficult to live in any other world. Why are we not talking about sitting until 7 o'clock on a Monday as well? We should have consistency, and I rather fear that despite all the sanctimonious comments to which I have been forced to listen throughout this debate, the congestion charge will have far more of an effect on the timetable kept to by Members than anything that is decided today.
	One serious proposal is the extra day for Departments to prepare answers to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland questions so that the Government can discuss those answers with the Assemblies and the Scottish Parliament. My problem with the proposal is that, as one knows if one has ever tabled a question on a devolved matter, such questions are rejected. I am therefore curious as to why an extra day is needed for Ministers to decide whether a question is out of order and whether they will answer it. If questions on devolved issues are to be answered, I welcome the proposal, because at the end of the day it is British tax that is divided up under the Barnett formula.

Ian Lucas: May I respectfully suggest that the hon. Gentleman consider his drafting of questions? I regularly table questions on devolved matters, and I have never had a question rejected.

Bill Wiggin: I suggest that the hon. Gentleman ask real questions about real issues in the Principality because he will find that it is extremely difficult to get a straight answer.

Ian Lucas: indicated dissent.

Bill Wiggin: Yes it is. However, I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman can ask questions about devolved issues, and I wonder what Assembly Members think of his skills because I am sure that they fiercely defend their right to discuss devolved issues.
	It is important to alter the summer recess, and I welcome the Government's suggestions for change. One of the most difficult tasks is to explain to electors why, for two and a half months in the summer, we are unable to put points to the Executive.
	One criticism that I have of the proposals concerns the e-mailing of questions. The ability to table questions electronically would be a positive step, but it appears that it will not be possible to table them by e-mail. Instead there will be a special web-based formula. Why cannot we have e-mailing of questions? That is the format that most people would prefer, and we ought to have the most sensible and practical means of sending questions to the Table Office. I am also unhappy about the proposal for a fixed number of written questions for a named day because it would be constructive to have as much flexibility as we can muster.
	One aspect of the operation of the House that I find most unpleasant is not tackled. I refer to the Speaker's list and the fact that one does not know when one is to be called or who will speak beforehand. The arrangements in the other House are sensible, and I wish that we would adopt them.
	I shall not take my full quota of time because it is important that as many people as possible get to speak. If we could have more practical, positive and flexible opportunities, not only for Back-Bench Members but for all those who seek actively to represent their electors in the way highlighted by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich, we would do something sensible today. Unfortunately we are only tweaking the arrangements, but at least let us change them for our families.

Huw Irranca-Davies: If you will allow me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I will go straight for the jugular and tackle some of the most controversial issues.
	This is not an attack on tradition—we all value tradition—and it is not change for change's sake. This debate should not be called XModernisation of the House of Commons"; its title should refer to efficiency or effectiveness. Modernisation for modernisation's sake is nothing. As parliamentarians, we should be trying to ensure that we have the culture, the environment and the framework to enable us to pass effective legislation on behalf of our constituents.
	In contrast to what was said earlier by a speaker whom I greatly admire, my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), I do not regard myself, in this place, as somebody who is different from others. I have always maintained that we are exactly the same as the constituents who send us here. We are here doing a job, a privileged job, as their representatives and as part of them—not as a glorified, strange species that exists in a rarefied environment—and that is how we should present ourselves.
	I turn first to one of the most contentious issues: whether we should start earlier and finish at 7 pm on Tuesday and Wednesday. If amendments (a) and (c) to motion No. 6 were agreed to, that proposal would be dead in the water. Efficiency is not about how many hours in the day one works. The macho concept that the more hours one works, the more productive one is, is outdated. The Government have led the way in tackling that attitude in industry. Surely it is not beyond the skills of those in this Chamber and of the administrative and support staff to organise our day in such a way that we can effectively carry out our work and still have a home life and be rounded human beings.
	Let me restate the example already given of an MP who comes in at 8 o'clock in the morning and starts by opening her mail. At 9 o'clock or 9.30, she proceeds to a Select Committee or a Standing Committee sitting. Around midday, she breaks to meet someone for a cup of coffee—albeit a working cup of coffee—followed by a working lunch with the Church Commissioners. She comes into the Chamber to listen to ministerial statements—she is working very hard indeed—then away she goes for another tranche of Committee sittings. In the evening, she has the superpower to return to the Chamber to listen to the debate, to sit on the Bench for two, three or four hours, and then to contribute a superb speech displaying an intellect that is alive and an energy that is still going after 14 hours. She will not do this on only one day; she will do it on three days. I admire her. She is an example to us all—an example of the most ludicrous way of working I have ever heard of.
	The organisation, no matter how busy or self-important it is, should be able to organise its working day more efficiently. The diligent MP I mentioned might be able to boast of the long hours to her constituents and the media, but surely it would be better if she were able to justify her existence by saying XI helped to pass first-class legislation, with a clear head, unclouded by a 14-hour shift—and, by the way, I also have a balanced family life which helps me to make fully rounded decisions."

John Mann: I am trying to follow the flow of my hon. Friend's argument about a balanced family life, but take my situation: my family lives in Nottinghamshire. How will the changes enhance my balanced family life?

Huw Irranca-Davies: That is a very good point, which highlights my lack of self-interest as a MP for Ogmore in Wales, a little further down the M4. I will not benefit from those changes either, but I would not deny the benefits to other MPs, and I think that their contribution will be more effective for the changes.
	We must be aware that many members of the public do not believe in the fable of the hard-working MP. Instead, they believe in the fable of the old boys club, whose members include the MP who arrives late after his day job in the City.

Linda Gilroy: So persuasive has my hon. Friend been that as an MP for a far-flung constituency who started her day by representing the interests of her local airport in an Adjournment debate this morning, who wants to take part in the Adjournment debate on fireworks, and who has sat here for five and a half hours waiting to be called—making one or two interventions in the meantime—I now intend to listen to his speech, but then leave the Chamber to work on preparation in my office rather than remain here to speak.

Huw Irranca-Davies: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Perhaps I will answer some of the points she raises during the rest of my speech.
	As I was saying, many people do not believe the fable of the hard-working MP, expecting Parliament to be an old boys club, in which the MP turns up late in the day after working in the City, shows his face in the Chamber, perhaps contributes to the debate, and then disappears. We know that that is not the truth, do we not? None the less, that is how we are perceived outside. The House of Commons has many fine traditions, but blind adherence to nonsensical long hours is not one of them. What about the tradition before 1570, when Parliament met from 8 am to noon; or the tradition dating from 1650 to 1700, when the House met at 8, 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning; or the tradition of sitting on Saturdays, which came to an end only in the 1730s, so that Sir Robert Walpole could have at least one day's hunting a week? Fine traditions all, but I am glad that we have got rid of some of them.
	A survey showed that over the summer—the long summer recess—the Houses of Parliament were the No. 1 visitor attraction in the whole of the United Kingdom. I therefore welcome making Parliament more visitor friendly—a place in which my constituents might learn about the workings of the House, not just about the long tradition and the pageantry. We must change the emphasis from ancient to contemporary, from pageant to working government, and from the past to at least the present.
	The hours must be changed to reflect modern working practices. That does not mean that we will clock out at 7 o'clock in the evening. I urge the Government to propose ways in which after 7 o'clock we could make constructive use of the Chamber, Westminster Hall and elsewhere in the Palace. There should be no compulsion on MPs to participate into the evening—that would fly in the face of everything I have said—but there should be scope to make use of these fine buildings and the facilities, to argue more in Adjournment debates and to bring Ministers to the House. We could win the PR battle about the old boys club operating here, but be in danger of losing the next one, which starts when the media turn around and say that the changes are all about letting MPs clock off at 7 o'clock. We need to counter that with effective proposals on how to make use of the evening.

Stephen McCabe: Am I right in thinking that my hon. Friend wants to constrain the normal working day, but then create extra space for new activities? What is the value of that?

Huw Irranca-Davies: I will tell my hon. Friend what the value is. It is unbelievable to me that our organisation is supposed to represent the best in democracy, yet we cannot organise our core business to happen at times that other people recognise as the core working day. What else can we do in the evening? I can give one fine example—youth activities, with youth parliaments and young people getting involved in our democratic processes—and I am sure that our talented Ministers can produce others.
	The changes will allow Parliament better to set the news agenda for the day, and I do not rubbish that, but that will not be of benefit only to the Government. It will be of benefit to the Opposition if the press have more time to digest and analyse their responses—okay, perhaps there is a flaw in my argument and that is not such a good idea, but it will give more time for the quiet man to be heard.
	Amendment (d) to motion 3 suggests a more radical option of commencing at 9.30 am. I am sympathetic to that proposal, but in this tradition, at this stage, I think it is a step too far. Many hon. Members, myself included, find that the initial part of the day is useful for preparation for speeches. However, I believe that the case for an earlier start will become clear in the near future, especially if we have the evenings in which to prepare.
	Amendment (b) to motion 4 proposes a twice-weekly session of topical questions. My name is on that amendment, and I welcome the fact that it is being debated on the Floor of the House, but my colleagues will excuse me if I do not support it. The Procedure Committee unanimously agreed that it should be debated, and that is right and proper, but allowing questions to be submitted with three days' notice will guarantee a far greater element of topicality than we currently have.
	I am running out of time, so I will skip part of my speech. The production of a calendar a year in advance is so obviously needed that I am surprised that we are discussing it only now, in 2002. An earlier finish on Thursday would be most useful to MPs who serve constituencies further afield than the home counties—I would certainly welcome the opportunity to get back to my family a little earlier. The additional week at Christmas or Easter that I can use in my constituency will be a tremendous advantage to any modern-day MP.
	The change to the summer recess has considerable advantages in terms of media and public perception. It is right that we should return earlier, then break for the conference season. It is also right that we should break a little earlier for the summer recess, which will enable me to visit schools and talk to youngsters about how my role is important to them.
	I close by paying tribute to the members of the Modernisation Committee and the Procedure Committee and to all those who have contributed to the debate. To vote against the proposals would be to send a message to our constituents and the public at large that we are more concerned with tradition than with good government. To support the changes shows that the House is moving from the medieval to the modern. I commend the proposals.

Michael Fabricant: The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) has given one of the most illogical speeches that I have heard this evening. He prays in aid of modernisation the practices of the past, yet in the past there was very little legislation. It is the sheer volume of legislation that we have to deal with today that dictates the hours that I believe we have to sit. With a 12-minute allowance, he said that he had to skip a number of pages of his lengthy speech, yet he argues in favour of a 10-minute allowance for speeches, which would ensure that there would be almost no debate at all.
	Tonight we have heard some tremendous examples of what the House of Commons can provide. We have heard bravura performances from my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) and, in his own and different way, from the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle), who was robust in dealing with interventions. However, we will not have any interventions if we are to have only 10-minute speeches.

Tom Harris: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Fabricant: I shall give way to this one because I am sure that it will be a good 'un.

Tom Harris: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the first-class speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) may well never have been delivered if it was not for the 12-minute limit on Back-Bench Members' speeches? That is the fact that surely every Back-Bench Member should welcome.

Michael Fabricant: The hon. Gentleman misses the point. It is up to the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and the Chairmen's Panel to do just that. It is up to the Speaker to determine how many Members have asked to be called. Time limits on speeches can then be set to allow those Members to speak. The Leader of the House is suggesting that there be 10-minute limits, and that is just plain wrong.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Michael Fabricant: I will not take a series of interventions because there is a time limit on speeches.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) asked the most profound question of all. She asked whether the proposals advance the ability of the legislature to question the Executive and call it to account. Will the legislature be better able to scrutinise legislation? I think that the answers to these questions are no. These proposals are all about making life easier for right hon. and hon. Members.
	Some of the motions are good. For example, I think that the motions to introduce topicality will do considerable good. They will improve Parliament and make us more relevant. However, we must be clear about relevance and how we are perceived by the population. This evening, many Members have said that in the United Kingdom, in the United States and even in Australia, where there is compulsory voting, the numbers of people casting a vote, as opposed to turning up at a polling station, are falling. That is because Members and their legislatures are not seen as relevant.
	I do not believe that any of the proposed changes, apart from those relating to topical questions, will improve the perceived relevance of the House. Going home at 7 o'clock and not properly scrutinising legislation will not improve the perceived relevance of this place.

Nicholas Winterton: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the matter of topical questions. Does he agree that perhaps the one positive thing that we are discussing is handing back to Back-Bench Members some authority over the timings of the House, which at present is almost exclusively in the hands of the Executive of the day?

Michael Fabricant: My hon. Friend is right. For that reason I shall be supporting his amendment. His Committee recommended that there be topical questions on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is interesting and, indeed, revealing that the Leader of the House chose to ignore that suggestion.
	I agree with some hon. Members who would say that the Leader of the House is probably one of the best that we have had in 10 or 20 years, but I think that he insulted the House by a most extraordinary display at the opening of the debate. He said—Hansard will record this—XIf you vote for my proposition, on Thursday I will reward you by telling you when your Christmas holidays are, when your spring holidays are and when your summer holidays are." What a bribe, and what an insult to the integrity of right hon. and hon. Members—

Martin Salter: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Fabricant: I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman.
	What an insult. The right hon. Gentleman thought that we could be bribed so easily. That is dreadfully wrong.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) talked about there not being captains of industry in this place. There are many reasons for that, but none that has anything to do with the number of hours that we sit. I like to think that I have made a contribution to this place—others have made many other valuable contributions—but such contributions are not confined to what we do in the Chamber. Contributions are also made in Select Committees.
	I am well aware that the Leader of the House said that 20 Select Committees meet when the House is sitting. However, the proposition that important Select Committees, such as the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, on which I serve, which is ably chaired by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), should sit at a time when there are questions and statements is absolutely wrong. It is bad enough already that we have to make the choices that we do. It is completely wrong that we should find ourselves in a situation where the House is weakened still further by Members being unable to be in the Chamber.
	What alternatives are being planned? The second bribe that is offered by the Leader of the House is when he says, XDon't worry, we shall turn Parliament into a gentlemen's and gentle ladies' club. The House will not be sitting after 7 o'clock, but don't worry. The bars will still be open, as will the restaurants." I understand that the hon. Lady for Oscars, the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson), would go still further. It seems that we shall have a cinema club. In fact, we shall all be able to go out and enjoy the cinema. No doubt that is being encouraged by the Whips on both sides of the House to ensure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle said, that the legions of people, as in XFidelio", do not go out trawling the streets for goodness knows what.

Peter Tapsell: That is a bowdlerisation of what I said.

Michael Fabricant: It is a summary of what my hon. Friend said. He made a powerful speech, which he would not have been able to deliver under the conditions that I believe will be introduced if all the proposals are passed.

Peter Pike: On the issue of short speeches, does the hon. Gentleman recognise exactly what is being proposed? It is proposed to allow two extra minutes for interventions within a 10-minute speech, and time will be allowed for the interventions. Virtually 14 minutes will be available if a Member gives way twice during a 10-minute speech.

Michael Fabricant: Yes. However, what I do not understand, and what the hon. Gentleman has not taken up, is why there needs to be change anyway. I welcome the proposed change of Standing Orders, which will allow the Speaker to assess how many Members want to contribute to a debate, and to adjust the time allocated accordingly. However, it seems nonsensical that there will be a fixed limit of 10 minutes regardless of how few or how many Members want to participate in a debate. That seems to reflect the usual respect that is accorded by the Executive to those who wish to speak in the Chamber.
	The hon. Member for Chorley—it is a pity that he is no longer in his place— took up the question of staffing in this place. It is clear from the response of the Leader of the House to a question asked by the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) that there was no consultation about staffing before the event. There will be consultation after today, but no questions were asked before. My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) said in an intervention that he had conducted a straw poll in the Tea Room, the result of which revealed that the staff, if they could, would resist the changes that are being proposed.
	The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) speculated on what we could do after 7 o'clock. She said that perhaps hairdressers could be opened for her later in the evening. I may or may not want to make use of that facility. However, we should not come here to visit hairdressers or to go to cinema clubs. We do not come to this place to enjoy a sort of social club. Our role primarily is to scrutinise the Executive and to examine legislation. That will not be best achieved by leaving the House at 7 o'clock. Similarly, it will not be best achieved by having to make difficult decisions about whether to appear in the Chamber or whether to attend meetings of Select Committees.
	I believe that the situation that we enjoy now is enjoyed for the best. We shall gain no respect nationally if we make changes tonight that are not for the benefit of the legislature but are merely for the benefit of our personal convenience.

Iain Luke: I made it clear in my maiden speech, which was on this very subject, that I would certainly seek to serve to the best of my ability, however ineloquent I may be, those progressive forces in the House that work to promote the cause of modernisation. I have been glad to serve in that guise as a member of the Procedure Committee in its lengthy investigation of the way in which we table questions. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) for his chairmanship of the Committee, which I believe has had a lot to do with the number of suggestions that the Government have accepted. I shall return to that point later.
	When I was a student studying political science and the nature of the British constitution and its institutions, of which this House forms the beating heart, one of my standard texts was written by John P. Mackintosh, a distinguished Edinburgh university professor and, until his death, the Member of Parliament for East Lothian. As the originator of many incisive and searching commentaries on the political world as he found it, he described and, indeed, defined in his texts the nature of the British constitution and its ability to accommodate change. Although he died some time ago, his analysis of how change comes about in the constitution is still relevant today.
	John Mackintosh is best remembered for describing that regenerative process of constitutional change as the ability to fill old bottles with new wines. Even old bottles develop fault lines and cracks and need to be replaced rather than recycled. At the end of the day, it is not the bottles that are important, but the quality and clarity of the wines that fill them. In simple layman's terms, this debate is about the quality of the legislation that we produce. It is that which matters to our constituents, and not the quaint processes that we follow to produce it. While having one eye on the parallel world outside this House, we therefore need to seek to serve the public better by embracing modernisation and adapting to change by adopting more modern work practices, just as parties on both sides of the House have encouraged other public bodies to do.
	The work of the Modernisation Committee must therefore be applauded and its proposals should be accepted as the part of the dynamics of change that we must all embrace. What organisation would survive, whether in the business, social or academic arena, if it did not plan its work in a constructive and strategic fashion, ensuring that those who are charged with carrying out its business construct a proper business plan and know exactly when that business will be conducted during the calendar year? Such plans make it clear when exams have to be sat or tax returns filled out, and might even deal with when family events can be arranged. In addition to the ability at last to carry over legislation from one Session to the next, such change will allow Governments truly to achieve and fulfil the mandate that they have been given by the public, without the fear that the business that they have been charged to conduct may be derailed through the obstructive and obscure tactics of an Opposition who are willing to employ technicalities of procedure to deny the popular will.
	In the course of the consultation carried out by the Modernisation Committee, I made clear my preference for an early start at 11.30 and also for a finish closer to 9 pm than 7 pm. Such a finishing time would extend the hours available for business. I made the proposal not out of perversity, but in the hope that the extra hours would give Back Benchers such as myself greater opportunity to contribute to the debates in this Chamber. Indeed, I am glad to be called earlier in this debate than I usually am.
	I also made the proposal in the light of the great unhappiness felt by a vast majority of Back Benchers—hon. Members should be well aware of this point—about the way in which their opportunity to contribute to debates is sometimes denied because of the preferential allocation of speaking time according to seniority. Membership of the Privy Council, often in respect of services given decades ago, gives a privileged set an unlimited speaking time. As a result, many hon. Members are excluded and their views and those of their constituents are ignored. I well remember sitting through the emergency debate about Iraq after having received letters and had meetings with churches, but being denied the right to speak. As a result, my constituents were disfranchised and left to one side. We cannot allow that to continue.
	On balance, having listened to the debate, I am convinced that the proposals advanced by the Leader of the House are worthy of support. The early finish will allow greater and less interrupted opportunities for hon. Members to become more involved in the myriad all-party groups and Back-Bench committees and to question Ministers more. It will also aid them in developing a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the issues with which we have to deal on a daily basis. I believe that a limit on speeches, however abused, will go some way to address my fears about speaking times in the House.
	As for the opportunities that we Back Benchers have to contribute to debates and how they are ordered, I believe that the issue may be better addressed as a subject of the calmer and more collected deliberation of an appropriate Select Committee. Having served on a Select Committee, I can see the benefits of such a process. Certainly, the work of the Procedure Committee on issues relating to how we table questions and the way in which they are dealt with, which has made such a significant contribution to the modernisation proposals, offers a useful format for such a review. I should like again to pay tribute to the Chairman of the Committee for the way in which he guided our deliberations. I believe that the quality of the work that was done and the report is a tribute to him and the way in which he handled the Committee's proceedings.
	It is also worth forcefully making the point that the Committee took the opportunity to visit the Scottish Parliament, which started from scratch, to review the way in which it dealt with tabling questions, before reaching our decisions and forming our recommendations. The reduction of tabling time, the introduction of electronic tabling and the cross-cutting question sessions in Westminster Hall on specific policy areas will have a huge impact on the way in which we scrutinise the Executive. The Committee could see the benefits of the first two of those proposals in action during our time in Edinburgh, where they have been in operation—I refer especially to electronic tabling—since 1999.
	As a member of the Procedure Committee, I should like to speak in support of the amendment tabled in the names of its members, including mine, and set out on the Order Paper, proposing that we introduce an extended Question Time on Tuesday and Thursday that deals with specific topics of relevance and contemporary concern to hon. Members and their constituents. We feel that the proposals deserve serious consideration and we urge hon. Members to support the amendment.
	I should like to take up a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), who is not in his place. The issue is not that we want to continue Question Time. We want the opportunity, which is already enjoyed in the House of Lords, to pick a specific topic for Question Time and have a half-hour in which hon. Members from both sides of the House can do a lot of work on that topic and focus on it. I know that the Leader of the House has referred to the proposed cut to three days in respect of tabling questions as a sop in that regard, but the issue at stake is completely different. It relates not to the tabling of specific questions, but to the ability to concentrate on a topic that we can choose in discussion with the Speaker and to put greater focus on the question at hand. Such questioning would give much greater opportunity to question Ministers more regularly and more quickly. It would also ensure that a sharper spotlight was focused on departmental policies. I think that that is a worthy and noble aim. The proposal would do a great deal to enhance the role and status of ordinary hon. Members and sits well with the rest of the long-overdue package of modernisation.
	While supporting and welcoming the proposals, we should not accept them as a final word. Although we have made significant progress, if we succeed in gaining the approval of the House for all the initiatives, much will be left to be tackled. While the changes will make a difference, there is still a lot to do. However welcome they are, they go only part of the way towards ensuring that we adapt to and accommodate the rapidly changing world that lies just outside the vaulted and grand gateway at St. Stephen's entrance. That is where the real world resides. We have heard about engagement with the public, and some time soon we will undoubtedly have to review how we as parliamentarians and a Parliament interact with both the constituents who elect us and the communities that we serve.
	I believe that many of the innovations of the devolved Scottish Parliament are worth considering. The work of the Public Petitions Committee, which is chaired by my constituency colleague and predecessor, Mr. John McAllion, must be an advance on the old, large, green handbag that sits forlornly behind the Speaker's Chair. If we consider the number of petitions in that bag and the number of people who can attend the Public Petitions Committee and present their case to parliamentarians, albeit in another Parliament, there is no comparison. The Leader of the House and his team should examine that. A Select Committee that is appointed to consider petitions and their bona fide anxieties would start the process of re-engagement.
	Only when we meet the challenges, match the changes outside and look the modern world in the eye, without feeling embarrassed about the quaint and quintessential reminders of the way we were 40, 50 and 60 years ago that continue to be perpetrated in our practices, can we say that we have achieved genuine modernisation. There is a long way to go.

Paul Goodman: I begin by making what is perhaps a dangerous admission—I am not familiar with every dot and comma of the report that has been placed before us. I have taken a course of action that is perhaps even more dangerous: coming to the Chamber to listen carefully to the Leader of the House, the shadow Leader of the House and other hon. Members.
	There is sometimes a temptation on the Conservative Benches to regard any proposal that the Government support as a plot against the interests of Back Benchers. I emphasise that that is not my view. Some of the proposals that the Leader of the House advanced are right and I shall vote for them. It makes sense to return in September. I have experienced only one parliamentary summer and it appeared to go on for a long time. The proposals about questions are also right, and I listened carefully to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) on that. However, I shall not support all the Government's proposals.
	I want to consider the main subject of our discussion—the hours. I admit that it would be in my interest for the House to stop sitting at 7 pm more often. I represent High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. I live there and in London, and it would be convenient for me to knock off at 7 pm more often, but that does not apply to other hon. Members. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) made that point in an intervention. Knocking off at 7 pm more often would not be convenient for him. However, the vote should not be decided on what is more convenient for me and less convenient for the hon. Gentleman. More important than my interests or the hon. Gentleman's are those of the House.
	The House should fulfil broadly two functions. First, it should act as a forum for debate—a point that the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) made well—and, secondly, it should hold the Executive to account. I want to outline my view of the impact of the Government's proposal to sit at 11.30 am. If the House sat at that time more often, the Chamber would fill for Question Time in the morning, but tend to empty in the lunch hour. What would happen then? Ministers would make statements at lunchtime, and it would not be in the interests of good government if the House emptied when Ministers made important, controversial statements on which they should be held to account.

Michael Fabricant: Does my hon. Friend believe that, in the spirit of modernisation, the Government will next propose bringing sandwiches into the Chamber?

Paul Goodman: That thought was not at the forefront of my mind before my hon. Friend mentioned it.

Andrew Love: Business questions are taken at 12.30 pm on Thursday. Government and Opposition Benches are always full between 12.30 and approximately 1.30 pm.

Paul Goodman: That is not always the case, although I agree that it sometimes happens. I do not believe that it would invariably be the case for statements, but I may be wrong.
	All sorts of duties compete for Members' attention. They include coming to the Chamber and questioning the Executive, attending debates in Westminster Hall, meeting constituents and serving on Select Committees. Sitting in the morning would mean either that hon. Members would be more likely to come to the Chamber, and not have time to see constituents, serve on Select Committees or attend debates in Westminster Hall, or vice versa. I appreciate that there is some overlap, but how much do we want? We should aim for as little as possible.
	Perhaps the debate about hours and timed speeches comes down to one simple question: what is a Member of Parliament? There are two views. First, a Member of Parliament is a person who does a job. If we believe that, we should sit from 9 to 5 or from 11.30 to 7, we should not have outside interests and we should be paid as professional politicians, without outside work that informs our job as Members of Parliament.
	The second view is that a Member of Parliament is not simply a person who does a job, but a representative whose outside work informs being a Member of Parliament. I have no interests to declare and my entry in the Register of Members' Interests is therefore empty. However, I believe that the House gains from Members of Parliament who also work outside and can bring their experience to bear. It is therefore good that the House can sit for hours that are sometimes inconvenient.

Peter Bradley: How many of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues who have remunerated outside interests work on the shop floor or stacking shelves in Tesco? Are the majority earning significant fees in the City, in consultancies or the law courts? Will he comment on the fact that those who have remunerated outside interests tend to vote in an average of 65 per cent. of Divisions, whereas those without such interests vote in 91 per cent.? What conclusions does he draw from that about the commitment to Parliament of his hon. Friends who have outside interests?

Paul Goodman: I am happy for the hon. Gentleman to make a party political point, but it does not obviate the choice before us. We must decide whether the first view of what constitutes a Member of Parliament is more sensible than the second. I take the second view, but I understand if he takes a different one.

Glenda Jackson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Paul Goodman: No. I am sure that the hon. Lady will forgive me as I have given way to several of her colleagues.
	The real question before us is whether a compression of the hours is more likely to enable the House to fulfil the objective of holding the Executive to account, or better to account. I do not believe that it is, which is why I shall not vote with the Government on their proposal to start at 11.30 am. I shall not, I am afraid, support my Front Benchers' proposal to start even earlier in the morning, either.

Helen Jackson: It has been an interesting debate so far, and many Members on both sides of the House have said, XWell, there is a lot in the Modernisation Committee's proposals that I agree with," before picking out one or two aspects of the package proposed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that they do not like. That takes me back to 1 May 1997.
	I must spoil the consensus by mentioning a couple of party differences. It is a mistake to think that there was not a clear party feel in May 1997—we were a new Government with a new, large majority. When we came to power, we were intent on introducing the minimum wage, reducing youth unemployment and many other big things, but the public also wanted us to get a grip of this place, as they felt that Parliament had been male, clubby and set in its ways. One of the driving forces that led us to a considerable election victory in May 1997 was the feeling that we really would make a difference, especially to how politics looked and felt to us all. I was delighted, therefore, to be on the first Modernisation Committee.

Paul Tyler: I do not want to dilute the hon. Lady's partisanship, but she will recall that the proposals derive from an agreement between her party and mine in the so-called Cook-Maclennan talks before the 1997 election.

Helen Jackson: It is lovely how the Liberal Democrats always manage to say, XMe too, me too" if it is a good thing or, XNothing to do with me" if it is a bad thing, although I am perfectly happy, on this occasion, to say, XYes, all right, you were on our side then."
	The lesson for many Members around the House has to be that, without the establishment of the Modernisation Committee, many of the reforms that have taken place since 1997 would not have happened, because there is no question but that a Modernisation Committee and the proposals in this package of reforms that the Conservatives agree with simply would not have been on the agenda had they won that election.
	I want to refer to a right hon. Member, but I cannot remember his constituency. He is the tall one who rides a bicycle. [Interruption.] Thank you. In the first Modernisation Committee, of which I was a member for a whole Parliament, the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) said that the Conservatives were adamant that sittings were not on the agenda. Why not? Because we did not finish at 10 o'clock, we did not programme legislation, debates were open ended and we frequently sat here until midnight and beyond.
	The priority at that stage was to introduce some sensible programming to the legislative timetable, but there was opposition to any notion of carry-over to achieve a parliamentary timetable of Bills. That was considered dangerous. This is an incremental reform, and I very much welcome my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House taking it on board and taking it further.

David Taylor: I, too, served on a previous Modernisation Committee. My hon. Friend suggests that the existence of the Committee since May 1997 has led to considerable change. May I put a slightly different point to her? The Modernisation Committee on which I sat was rapidly becoming bogged down in the mud of past practice, but the vision, tenacity, energy and powers of persuasion of the Leader of the House have brought us to today's debate. It really is as simple as that.

Helen Jackson: I thank my hon. Friend, but he needs to recognise that the money was spent on Westminster Hall and that debates have been taking place there. Proceedings now finish at 10 o'clock, and there have been many other changes. This package is a continuation of the process.
	I draw hon. Members' attention to something that has not yet been mentioned. Public opinion is still in favour of our reforming the sitting hours of the House. The figures in the YouGov survey show that 90 per cent. of Labour voters and 82 per cent. of Conservative voters are in favour of these reforms.
	I stress that hon. Members who argue that these reforms are nothing to do with improving scrutiny are barking up the wrong tree. They have everything to do with improving scrutiny. It is a mistake to believe that scrutiny is achieved only through Select Committees. There are countless ways in which Back Benchers can scrutinise the Executive. Day in day out, we ask questions of Ministers during statements, we write letters to Ministers, we complain to the press, we use the media, we hold meetings, and we bring constituents to see Ministers. Some of the toughest scrutiny that I have participated in was through the all-party parliamentary group on water. When my party was in opposition, Members from both sides of the House piled in to support what that all-party group argued for. It was not a Select Committee, but we got changes to the legislation when the Labour Government came to power. It held its meetings in the evenings so that the public who cared about that issue could discuss it with Members.
	That brings me to the question of the sitting hours of the House, which should be put in its historical context.

Peter Duncan: The hon. Lady seems to be advocating that the only route to respect for this Parliament is through reform and modernisation. Would she accept the lesson that can be learned from Scotland? Members of the Scottish Parliament can submit parliamentary questions by e-mail, it sits for less than two days a week, and its longest sitting went to just beyond 6 o'clock, but esteem for that Parliament is the lowest in the United Kingdom.

Helen Jackson: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. He makes a point about the devolved Assemblies, which must win the support of the electorate in those areas. I believe that they will work hard to do that.
	The sittings issue has caused the most dispute. It has been said that starting Question Time and statements earlier, with the possibility of further statements in the middle of the day, will have a negative effect on MPs' ability to scrutinise the Executive. I cannot see that. I believe that altering the sitting hours will, within a number of years, be acceptable to everyone in the House and outside. People will wonder why on earth Parliament took so long to change.
	The historical context is that MPs were part-timers who earned their money in the mornings. Some Opposition Members, such as the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman), have been honest enough to admit that. He thinks that it is a good idea for Members of Parliament to be part-timers who earn money in the morning and come here to do their business in the afternoon. I do not think that that is what the public expect of Members of Parliament. The House will be improved and the public will give us more credit if we start our serious business in the Chamber in the morning.

Stephen McCabe: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Helen Jackson: No.
	Some of the arguments about Select Committees are somewhat spurious. It has been said that Select Committees that meet in the afternoon will no longer be able to do so and will have to meet at 9.30 in the morning. There will be three clear afternoons a week for the deliberations of Standing Committees, Select Committees and other Committees, added to the possibility of two hours in the mornings. That will increase the potential for scrutiny in the House rather than removing it.

Alan Williams: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Helen Jackson: If I get injury time.

Alan Williams: May I clarify the position of Select Committee Chairmen? When the modernisation proposals were first presented, we made no recommendations about sitting hours. When I discussed the matter with the Liaison Committee on Thursday morning, it was evenly divided: as many Chairmen favoured the change as opposed it. There is no unanimous view that Select Committees will be damaged—and the Public Accounts Committee, of which I am a member, meets at 4 pm.

Helen Jackson: I believe that there is a difference of view. I refer to my side of the House, the other side of the House, the Commission and the Liaison Committee.
	I think that when something that has existed for a long time is changed it is a bit scary, but people settle down and arrange how to do their work as well as possible remarkably quickly. I think that that will apply to Select Committees and scrutiny, and also to other aspects of the House's business.
	Some people are worried about starting at 11.30 am because they do not know what they will do with their evenings. I would like to think that the House of Commons, indeed the Palace of Westminster, will continue to be a thriving, vibrant place in the evenings. Members of the public who work during the day will have an opportunity to come here for political meetings. We MPs are politico-nutcases: if a really useful political discussion is taking place in the evening with members of the public, we would want to meet them and hear their views. This is where that should happen. Indeed, I am sure that the Leader of the House will find new ways of using the Chamber after 7 pm, and of using Westminster Hall. I am sure that this will remain one place where we can spend useful evenings.
	We will have a choice, however. Occasionally we may well want to eat outside with friends, because we are not tied to this place. It will become a good, grown-up Parliament.

Martin Salter: There is more than a hint of fantasy in some of the rumours and bluster that have been flying around this place over the past few weeks, as traditionalists struggle to find coherent arguments against the sensible reforms proposed by my right hon. Friend's Committee. As a member of that Committee, I want to explain how we tried to construct a package that would benefit Members across the political spectrum and throughout the country. It was not an easy task.
	These proposals represent modest progress towards a 21st-century Parliament, but they are hardly revolutionary. They include measures to ensure better scrutiny of legislation: more Bills would be published in draft, and more legislation would be carried over. The current archaic procedures create legislative logjam, and often result in the cutting off of proper scrutiny of Bills. That means that bad legislation finds its way on to the statute book too often. Question Time would become more topical and relevant. Parliament as a whole should aspire to that. Notice for the tabling of questions would be reduced from 14 days to three.
	Some have fully embraced the conspiracy theory that our proposals for a limit of 10 or 12 minutes on speeches is part of some obscure Government plot to shut up awkward Back Benchers. I can assure them that the very opposite is the case. The limited opportunity for Members to speak—particularly for those from the 1997 and 2001 intakes—is a source of continuing irritation to those on both sides of the House. We have all seen stooges be occasionally wheeled out by those on both Front Benches to shut up a particularly awkward Back Bencher. That has certainly happened to me [Hon. Members: XYou are a stooge."] No, it is the other way around. I asked for that, Madam Deputy Speaker. I can see a Whip smiling, so it is clear that they put their hands up to that one. More Members of Parliament speaking means a wider representation of views in this House, which could make life more awkward for the Government, rather than easier.
	Long-serving Members should also understand the frustration of newly elected MPs at the fact that the time available for them to speak is often used up by 25-minute dirges from long-serving Members of a House in which seniority triumphs over brevity. It is high time that we dispensed with the Buggins' turn principle in this place. All our constituents should be treated equally; all have a right to an equal level of representation, however geriatric their Member of Parliament is, or is not.
	The Commons is at its best when its arguments are short and to the point, and when as wide a cross-section of views as possible is expressed. I defy all but the most paranoid to conclude that these proposals are anything other than entirely sensible and fundamentally democratic. They will enhance the workings of Parliament for both Opposition and Government Members.
	The opponents of reform have concocted all sorts of spurious objections to the modernisation package. The proposal on sitting hours was subjected to an incredible campaign of misrepresentation by those who oppose change for whatever reason. If adopted, the new hours will be exactly the same in number as the current hours, but they will be more civilised and more sensible. The proposal to begin the summer recess earlier in July, but for Parliament to reassemble for part of September, does not represent a single day's less work for any MP in this place. Whatever else these reforms are designed to do, they are not designed to make us work less hard or less often.
	I do not have children myself, but I sympathise with my Scottish colleagues, who, due to differences in the school calendar, sometimes have only two weeks at home with their children in the school holidays.

Peter Pike: The same is true in Burnley.

Martin Salter: I am given to understand that the same applies in Burnley. I believe that the Leader of the House has been slightly remiss in not consulting Conservative Members on the exact calendar for school holidays for Eton, Harrow and other such places. In any case, as has been said in many other more eloquent contributions, three months is far too long for any Government of any political persuasion to escape the scrutiny of Parliament.
	It was the devil's own job to produce a package that could appeal to a cross-House consensus. Obviously, the hour off on Thursdays will benefit people who have some distance to travel, and I welcome that. As the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) said, the proposed hours for Tuesdays and Wednesdays could prove beneficial to people like him and me, who live some 40 miles from London. However, the flip-side is that those who, like me, travel home most nights will have less time to spend in their constituencies in the morning. As my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) said, there is no one-size-fits-all package. There is no perfect solution.

Stephen McCabe: I accept that there is no one-size-fits-all package, but given that there is no conspiracy here, what is the rationale for coupling the popular proposal for a 6 o'clock finish on a Thursday with the contentious change in hours? Where is the logic in that?

Martin Salter: That is a question best directed to the Leader of the House, but I say to my hon. Friend in all comradeship that he will do himself no favours if he cherry-picks elements of the package for purely personal reasons. We are putting together a package of reform for the House as a whole, not for individual Members.
	Some Conservative Members have argued for consistency in the times that we start and finish. It is wholly ridiculous to assume that this House could meet before 2.30 on a Monday, given the distance that many colleagues have to travel. There is little scope to alter those arrangements, and no alterations have been proposed.
	However, there is precious little justification for Parliament waiting to begin its business until 2.30 pm on a Tuesday and Wednesday. Conservative Members and sections of the press like to try and focus attention on the time that Parliament will finish its business, but the real question has to do with the time that we start. The earlier start is the key. When there are votes to be counted, the House will likely finish at 7.30 or 8 pm, but I fail to see how that is at the cutting edge of family friendly policies.
	On Fridays, most hon. Members will have a full day of constituency business, advice surgeries and other engagements. That will eat into what the rest of the human race laughingly calls the weekend. Starting early will give the Commons more chance to set the news agenda for the day and allow greater coverage of our deliberations. The proposed earlier start will enhance Parliament, not diminish it.

Paul Goodman: If we are to start early, why not start at 9 am rather than 11?

Martin Salter: That question will be put to the vote. However, it is incongruous that the Conservatives, who oppose a start at 11.30 and propose one at 9.30, should be prepared to vote for the status quo if their proposal is not accepted. The Conservative proposal is a smokescreen to hide the party's real agenda, which is to disguise the fact that 66 per cent. of all Conservative Members have business interests outside the House. The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) said that morning sittings would not work because they would interfere with his stockbroking activities. That is the priority that two thirds of Conservative Members give to serving their constituents. They would rather sit in the courts or on company boards than in the House of Commons.
	I am warming to my theme—the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) has inspired me. One Conservative Front Bencher has no fewer than 16 directorships to nurture. It is no wonder that he wants the mornings off. He is not here now, and I wonder why.
	There is a Conservative Chairman of a Select Committee who, as well as being a practising barrister, moonlights as a director of eight companies while at the same time being a partner in another company and an adviser to two more. We should not be surprised to learn that that hon. Gentleman opposes the reform of the House's hours of sitting. One wonders when he has time to sleep.
	I commend the research that has been done into the reasons for and against reform, but the matter gets even more absurd when one hears that hon. Members are worried about what they will do with themselves between 8 pm and 11 pm, two nights a week. I assure them that it will be OK. The bars and restaurants will still be open; drinking, eating and working will not be banned under the proposals.
	I expect the pattern of the House and its activities to change. There is no reason why the meetings that we have in the morning at present cannot be held in the evening. I look forward to having dinner with constituents without being interrupted by the Division bell. I do not need my pager to buzz or a Division bell to ring to tell me when to work and when not to. As Members of Parliament, we define the scope of our responsibilities in our own individual ways.
	There is little that I can say to provide succour and support to any MP convinced that a change in hours will cause his wife to accuse him of having torrid affairs. The recently revealed activities of Mrs. Edwina Currie and Mr. John Major demonstrate that afternoons are as good a time as any for illicit love-making.
	We have reached the depths of ridiculousness, but the opponents of reform have no shame. Only last week, I heard of a former Whip putting it around that the proposals are merely a plot to abolish the overnight allowance. That would have a particular effect on south-eastern MPs from my region. I invite my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to stamp on that piece of nonsense when he responds to the debate.
	Concern has been expressed about conditions for staff. I learned my politics representing staff in the workplace The proposal has been out to consultation since December last year. Any trade union official who did not represent his members' views in that time is not worth his salt and should look for another job.
	It is easy for us to tell other public service workers such as firefighters, health service workers and teachers that they must modernise, but surely we should be setting an example. Why is it right for other people to modernise and change the way in which they do business while we hang on to some notion of tradition, as if the way that we have done things for 100 years is somehow right?
	This debate is turning into a battle royal between the radicals and the reactionaries. It will determine the fate of our programme to modernise and make more relevant and effective our creaking democratic institutions. If this Parliament, with its huge new intake in 1997 and 2001, cannot reform this place, an opportunity will be lost for a generation.

Stephen McCabe: It is an enormous pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter). I agree with him on one point—this is no Great Reform Act 1832. When we find ourselves comparing the abolition of the property qualification, the extension of the franchise and the abolition of rotten boroughs with Members of Parliament who are concerned with looking after their narrow self-interest and getting home a bit earlier at night, we are in some difficulty.
	There is some merit in the package of proposals before us. A lot of the measures are welcome—the revised line of route, conducted tours, pre-legislative scrutiny, the attempt to avoid the clash between Westminster Hall and Committees, provisions for the Speaker on a Friday, and support for the production of a calendar are all excellent proposals, and I will happily support them. However, we are told that the proposed change in hours is a reform that will make Parliament more accessible and raise our esteem in the eyes of the public. I do not think that it will make Parliament more accessible. My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) said in an intervention on the Leader of the House that that is fine for tourists who want to come here at 9.30 in the morning for the line of route tour or for people who live within 30 miles of London. However, for people who live in Birmingham, Wales or any other region, it means that the day out they could have had coming to Parliament, seeing Prime Minister's Questions and meeting their MP will disappear. The alternative is to get up at about 6.30 in the morning, pay the expensive train fare to come, and then have less of a day here. MPs will have a compressed day, with more business and less time to spend with their constituents. I am extremely dubious about how this proposal will make the place more accessible.
	If the proposals are to raise our esteem, why is the question about hours framed in terms of setting the agenda for the news? In the past few years, all we have talked about is the culture of spin doctors and how we are against it, yet we are saying here that we want to change the hours so that we can set the news agenda. We know that people will be on brief and on the breakfast news to get in first. It is nonsense and will do nothing to raise our esteem.
	Since I have been in this place, no constituent has yet come to me and said, XI am really worried about the hours you work." No one has ever raised that with me, but they will say how crazy it is that we have spent a whole day debating how we can narrow our hours so that a proportion of us will get home early. That defies any logic and judgment.
	I have doubts about the carry-over. I believe that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is sincere when he says that it is not the intention to have more legislation. However, it is the tendency of all Governments to legislate as much as possible, and if we create conditions in which there is more opportunity, I bet my bottom dollar that we will have more legislation. It will stack up at the other end, so although the proposal looks attractive on the surface, I have doubts about whether it will make sense.
	In an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West, I pointed out that the proposal to finish at 6 o'clock on Thursday night is popular—there is little dissent about that. However, what is the logic of coupling that proposal with the one about hours? There is to be a free vote. The process will be open. No one is trying to manage or railroad us, so why have we unnecessarily coupled together those two things?

Caroline Flint: If we end Thursday sittings at 6 o'clock, without making other changes, we shall be reducing the hours for debate in this place.

Stephen McCabe: In order to allay my hon. Friend's anxiety, I am happy to find another hour somewhere else in the week to stick back on.
	We are coupling together two things that do not need to go together, because we know fine well that the proposal about the hours is contentious. We are creating a false linkage. I hope that hon. Members will support the amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin). We should deal with the issues that people want to tackle; if we do not want to deal with something, we should not be railroaded into it.
	Many Members have talked about the 10-minute limit on speeches. I have no problem with the proposal that we should make short speeches, but recently we have noticed that such limits have tended to reduce Members' willingness to take interventions. The worst example was during the recall debate on Iraq. All over the place, people were demanding the recall of Parliament, but instead of a debate full of interventions we heard a succession of 10-minute statements that had been written on the previous night before the document was released in the morning. They added very little to the debate.
	If we add some injury time, but for only two interventions, we are saying that debates must be limited to formatted 10-minute speeches with two interventions. That will not enrich the parliamentary process; it will do nothing for us when we are dealing with real matters where there is a difference of opinion and we need to try to influence each other and persuade each other of our views. It will turn us into a succession of robots, with two little gaps in our speeches.

Andrew Love: The other thing that characterised the Iraq debate was the fact that a large number of Members never got to say anything at all. There is tension, but the proposals would offer a reasonable compromise to ensure that we have the type of debate that my hon. Friend wants, with contributions from as many Members as possible.

Stephen McCabe: I am not disputing the proposal that we should make shorter speeches. In general, I support it. My point is that to entrench two interventions per speech will not necessarily assist reasoned debate.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) and several other Members said that we must do everything in our power to avoid time wasting in Parliament. However, if I was in opposition, one of the few weapons at my disposal would be the opportunity to frustrate the Government, and that might involve a certain element of time wasting. Although I hope that my hon. Friend is right and that it will be 20 or 30 years before we are in opposition, I am not sure that I want to put myself in the position where almost no powers would be available for an Opposition to frustrate a Government that is hell-bent on doing things that I disapprove of.
	Such ideas are attractive when we have a huge majority, but the time will come when that will not be the case for members of my party. If I disagree with a Government, I want to be able to frustrate them.

Peter Bradley: It is extraordinary that this modest package of reforms should be the subject of debate rather than consensus. That it should provoke such passion and that we should take such pains over it is not to our credit.
	It will bewilder the public. It shows how detached we are from the daily realities that they experience. After all—I have heard very little reference to this—this is their place. This is their Parliament, not ours. We are here under licence to represent their interests, to give them a voice and to ensure that the laws that we pass on their behalf are good laws. We are not here, although many Members—some on the Labour Benches but many on the Opposition Benches—believe that we are, for our own convenience, our own comfort, our own aggrandisement or, in some cases, our own profit.
	The key question in my mind is: do our current arrangements here help us to discharge our duties to our constituents as efficiently and effectively as possible? In my view, the answer is no. I have heard hon. Friends cavil at the idea that we should make this place an efficient place in which to do business. I find that extraordinary. We demand of our constituents, as my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter) said a few minutes ago, that they should modernise their working practices, whether it be in the public services or in the private sector, and yet we resist that imprecation ourselves.
	I believe that the Modernisation Committee's recommendations are sensible and constructive. They do not go far enough, and they should be seen to be the beginning of a process, not the end of it, and they should address the causes as well as the symptoms of Parliament's problems. The measures proposed are eminently reasonable. Who would not support the carry-over motions, which increase the scope for scrutiny and the improvement of legislation, except those who wish to wreck the programme on which a Government have been elected?
	I am all for scrutiny, I am all for criticism, I am all for amendment, I am all for improvement of legislation. That is the proper task of Parliament; it is not to frustrate the Government who are elected to promote their programme, not to wreck that legislation. The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) has been naked in his advice to his quiet man, the Leader of the Opposition, to the effect that the role of the Opposition is to wreck rather than oppose or improve. I think that we shall have to differ on what the role of the Opposition should be.
	Who would oppose time limits, other than those who are always guaranteed to speak, not because of the quality of the contributions that they make to debate but because of a combination of good health, a fat majority and long service in this place? My hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Luke) was quite right about the hierarchy that operates in this place. There is a two-tier membership of the House of Commons, as is too often revealed in the major set-piece debates. Many hon. Members have mentioned the debates on Iraq on 24 September. That was a classic example of the two-tier membership of the House of Commons, in which MPs from more recent intakes—1997 and 2001 in particular—are rendered second-class Members in the House of Commons, and by the same token their constituents are deprived of an equal right to representation in the House of Commons. That should end. It is not a subject of the proposals tonight, but I hope that those who do take these decisions—

Ian Lucas: Why not?

Peter Bradley: I believe that it is a matter for the Speaker and I am sure that he has heard the strong views of many Members on both sides of the Chamber on this issue.
	Much has been said about the length of speeches. The hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) railed that 10 or 12 minutes was not enough to allow him to make the points that he wanted to make. I believe that I could have condensed what he said into about 37 seconds—[Interruption.] I will be generous; perhaps 38.
	However, I take issue with my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). He says that he is sent here to represent his constituents and that he has a right and a duty to them to speak for as long as he needs to speak in this place. I have to tell him that I was sent here by my constituents; every Member of the House was sent here by his or her constituents and every one of them should have an equal right to express their views and represent those of their constituents. The longer my right hon. Friend or I speak, the fewer of our colleagues can contribute to the debate, and it seems to me that the greater the number of voices that are heard in a debate, whether they agree with one another or not, the better the quality of that debate is likely to be and the better the representation that we give to the people who send us here.
	Who could oppose better facilities for the public, whose Parliament this is? It is a shame and an embarrassment, if not a scandal, that when people visit Parliament—whether they are tourists or people with an interest in how our democracy works—we make them stand outside in the rain. This is their Parliament, but we stand them outside in all weathers. If they are fortunate enough to enter the building, we deny them the right to have a cup of tea, which is probably just as well because we also deny them the right to relieve themselves when nature calls. That is a contemptuous way in which to express our democracy and to deal with our constituents.
	As for hours, I can see no problem with rearranging the hours in which we do business in the House. I have heard no hon. Member suggest that he or she wants to go home at 7 o'clock. No one has said, XI want to bunk off at 7", although I have to say that, like other human beings, I would like occasionally to walk over the bridge to the Royal Festival hall or to go to the theatre. That is the real life that Opposition Members talk about when they seek to defend the fat cheques that they get from their consultancies. I would like to do what my constituents do just once in a while, and it would be just once in a while because I have plenty to keep me busy and happy in my office and around the precincts of Westminster.
	I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Helen Jackson), who said that, after 7 pm, a thousand blossoms can bloom in the House. Why should we not have debates—those that we rarely have—about Select Committee reports? Why not invite other people into the Chamber to debate with us after 7 o'clock? They do not have to be elected Members of the House of Commons. For that matter, why should we not be able to leave the precincts of Westminster and discover that we can have debates and political discourse, and enlighten ourselves, and perhaps other people, outside the village of Westminster? Would not that be a valuable contribution to a revitalised democracy in Westminster?
	The argument today has been between those who recognise that they are paid as professional politicians—I make no apology for the fact that I am a professional politician, and I am very well paid for it in my view—and want to do a professional job, as they should, and those who are paid for full-time jobs, but want to work part time. The argument is between those who believe in public service and those who, frankly, believe in self-service.

Kevin Brennan: I have listened with interest to what my hon. Friend says and support much of it, but his last remark is very unfair to those of us who have genuine concerns about the hours. For example, because of the timetable of the Select Committee on which I serve—I did not support the decision, but it was what the majority of its members wanted—I can never get to questions in the House on Thursdays, and I regret that very much. I am not going out to do a second job.

Peter Bradley: There are many competing calls on our time, and we simply cannot do everything that we would like to do; we have to make choices. We will still have to make choices about whether we start at 9.30 or 11.30, or whether we continue to start at 2.30.
	I suggest that some hon. Members overlook the changes that have already taken place in society and, indeed, in the make-up of Parliament. We have not heard much—apart from what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West—about those who may not have the interests of Parliament uppermost in their minds. The hours and seasons of our sittings in the House derive from a time when the gentlemen who inherited the right to sit in Parliament and frame the nation's laws—they were men, they were usually gentlemen and they usually inherited the right—spent their mornings in the City, in the courts, in bed, not always their own beds; indeed, sometimes in the beds of fellow Members. In the summer, they spent long months on the grand tour or, indeed, on their estates.
	The majority of Members no longer have those kinds of preoccupations, so it is time to change our arrangements, but a substantial majority still have; 24 per cent. of Members have remunerated outside interests. Some of them sit on the Labour Benches; a large majority on the Opposition Benches. I simply say that they should make a choice about whether their priority is serving their constituents in Parliament or collecting their pay cheques in the City. Whatever they decide, they should not have the right to dictate terms to the rest of us who are trying to do a proper job in the House.
	I said earlier that these measures should be the beginning and not the end of a process. I have read all J. K. Rowling's novels, and every time I read about Hogwarts, I think of this place—it has the same mysteries, the same magic, and some of the malevolence. In fact, as I was looking at the shadow Leader of the House earlier today, I thought that there was no one whom he resembled more than the master of potions, Mr. Snape. If he has not read the book, I suggest that he do so. This is a place of arcane and archaic rituals, which do not enhance but suppress the quality of the debate: they suppress the originality of thought that we should treasure and cherish; they curtail the freedom of debate; and they exclude both the members of the public whom we serve and, as we discussed earlier, too many hon. Members as well.
	Those debates are perhaps for another day. I support the programme of the Leader of the House and the Modernisation Committee, which they have discussed long and hard. I hope, however, that we will be assured in the wind-up speeches that that is the beginning of a process—perhaps a long process—and not an end in itself.

Wayne David: I have been a Member of the House for just over a year, and, by and large, I have been very impressed by it. It is undoubtedly a great privilege to be here. There is much to be said about the democratic tradition of which we are all part. There is a great sense of history in the House, the quality of debate is, by and large, of a high standard, and the Executive are held to account to a greater extent than in many other legislatures across Europe and the world.
	Our scrutiny of legislation is thorough and comprehensive, and our business is conducted with a high degree of openness and transparency. I therefore conclude that there is not a case for fundamental change to our procedures. The essentials of our parliamentary democracy are sound. That is not to say, however, that there is no room for improvement. The House can be made more effective and more efficient, and the proposals of the Modernisation Committee show us the way forward. I want to focus briefly on some of the proposals.
	In this evening's debate, the proposal to change the sitting hours of the House has been the most contentious. It is proposed that sittings on Tuesday and Wednesday should start at 11.30 in the morning and finish at seven in the evening. That is not a new suggestion—suggestions akin to it have been made many times in the past. I was reading in the Library that, in 1930, a Select Committee on the hours of meeting and rising of the House was specially convened, which examined the issue in some detail and concluded firmly:
	XThe great bulk of the evidence went definitely against such a proposal".
	The reason was given that
	Xprofessional men would thereby be practically debarred from becoming Members of Parliament".
	Members' priorities have changed somewhat since 1930, and many professional men and women are full-time Members of Parliament. The situation is very different.
	There have been other attempts at change since 1930, and all have come to nothing. We now have a golden opportunity. Many arguments have been made today for change. I believe that some of the most convincing arguments have been those in favour of creating a more family friendly atmosphere in the House. I know that all Members have received a circular from the Equal Opportunities Commission, which produced firm evidence to show that candidates from all parties—both men and women—have found that the hours of the House are an obstacle to allowing their names to go forward. If we want to create a modern democracy and an institution that represents the people of our country in this new century, we must have systems of work to facilitate the maximum number of people putting their names forward for election. I believe that we live in a representative democracy. The House is the pinnacle of that democracy. It should not be an old man's or gentleman's club. We want a modern institution.
	I have heard Members say that it is all well and good having family friendly hours, but only if one lives in London or the south-east. I come from Wales and it would be impossible for me to go home on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening. However, the issue is not about personal self-interest; it is about creating a modern institution that is best for everyone and about opening it up to make it truly representative.
	As many Members know, for a decade, I was a Member of the European Parliament. I am sure that they will agree that many things in that Parliament are wrong and need to be profoundly changed. However, one of the good things is the sensible working hours for Members that allow a businesslike, non-clubbish atmosphere to be created. That is positive for democracy. Another positive element of the European Parliament is that, in a revolutionary sense, it produces an annual calendar, so that Members know exactly when they have to be in their places of work. We should definitely agree to such a modest advance.
	I am also glad that Members seem to have given majority approval to the idea of having a 10-minute limit on speaking time. That also happens in the European Parliament. Perhaps there will not be so many great flights of oratory or so many Members intoxicated with the exuberance of their own verbosity, but we will have far more Members of the House thinking that they can make a genuine contribution to a debate. Rather than sitting for hours on end hoping and praying to be called, many more Back Benchers will definitely be able to make a contribution. They will be able to tell their constituents that they are here to represent their interests and will be able to show them Hansard to show how they are doing that. That would be a huge and positive step forward.
	I wish to make two further points. The development of Westminster Hall as a lively debating chamber should be welcomed. It has been a success. Its atmosphere is special, and is very different from the confrontational atmosphere in this House. It adds to the sense of democracy in this place.
	Finally, I wish to refer to the need for parliamentarians to connect with our public. It is incredible that we have not yet got a visitor centre in the House. I am pleased that a study will consider that point, and I have no doubt what the conclusion will be. I am also surprised that groups of constituents do not receive financial support from the House when they have to travel long distances to visit Members. That point should be considered too.
	I am also surprised that we have not learned as much as we could have done from the devolved institutions. For example, the Welsh Assembly, which was only established in 1999, already has a visitor centre, which has proved to be extremely popular. This place should be open on Saturdays, so that members of the public can, at least, look around to see what the mother of Parliaments looks like. We could do one thing that would, in many ways, be symbolic of the change. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has mentioned on many occasions the fact that visitors to this place are referred to as strangers. Let us drop that once and for all and call them visitors and our guests.
	The recommendations before us are well thought out and well crafted. I sincerely hope that they will be adopted. They are not about making life easier for Members of Parliament, about reducing our work load or cutting back on our hours. They are about promoting democracy, enhancing accountability and ensuring that the House is seen as relevant by the people of this country. In short, they are about making the House a modern parliamentary institution.

Eric Forth: The debate has been informative and, by and large, good natured, given the strength of feeling on both sides of the House. I want to pick up a few of the key contributions that encapsulated some of the more crucial arguments. Before I do that, however, I want to add my praise for the work of the Procedure Committee under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton). It has offered us, on an all-party basis, a sensible and practical way to advance the ability of Members to question the Government in the House. Remarkably, however, one Committee member told us that although he had tabled the amendment in the name of the Committee, he did not feel able to vote for it. That is another approach, which perhaps we should consider.
	The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) made an excellent speech. He said—I paraphrase him, and hope I do so accurately—that voters care about what we do here, not when we do it. That is a brief sense of his contribution, and I agree with him. If we could focus on that as a proposition it would be much more productive than getting bogged down, as we all too often have, in the arguments about the hours we work. We will come to our collective conclusion about the hours that we work and get on with it, whatever that may be. I hope, however, that Members will give far more consideration to how effective we are when we are here rather than worrying excessively about the hours that we work.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) also reflected that sentiment and put it rather similarly. He said—again, I paraphrase—that it is what we do that matters. Although he favoured many of the proposals, he emphasised that thought and I hope we cling to it when we vote.
	In a similar vein, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), in a typically robust speech, said something that rang true with me. She explained that rarely in her experience have constituents questioned her or taxed her on our working hours or our procedures in the House. She was right in saying that her constituents want to know how effective we have been in our different ways in the House, and in the different roles that we fulfil, in discharging our duties on their behalf and, ideally, for their benefit.
	I am always intrigued when Members say, as many have today, that some constituents talk of little else than the hours we work. Apparently, some constituents are going to be watching closely what we do tonight and will judge us, individually and collectively, on the momentous decision that we reach on the hours we work. All that that illustrates is how very different our constituents and constituencies are, and I must admit that I am more at one with the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich than I am with those who claim to have that remarkable dialogue with their constituents.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) highlighted one of the more important considerations, which is to be voted on tonight. We have gone badly wrong with the systematic timetabling or programming of Bills. Many Members have argued that one of our prime duties is the scrutiny of legislation. The Conservatives contend—I think I speak for most, if not all, of my colleagues in this—that the Government's ruthless approach to restricting the time available for the scrutiny of Bills both in Standing Committee and on Report has diminished our effectiveness as a House of Commons and the opportunities that we as Members of Parliament have properly to scrutinise legislation. That is why I will ask my hon. Friends to vote against the motion to validate systematic timetabling of Bills. It has ill served the House as a legislature and we should reconsider it.
	I appreciated the contribution of the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle), who always has at the front of his mind the welfare of those who work with us in the House. I also appreciated his use of the term Xwith us" because that is the appropriate way to put it. He put his finger on a flaw in the procedure. We have got to this stage and are a few minutes away from making decisions on how we work and the hours that we work without having properly consulted the staff who work in the building with us. It would have been more appropriate for a Government who claim to care so much about working people to take more trouble to learn what the people who work with us in this building truly think about our way of working and our hours, and allow that to inform the debate. Apart from the hon. Gentleman's contribution, the matter has not been mentioned at all, which I very much regret.
	I turn now to the contribution of the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley). If I may give him a little avuncular advice, I think that he should take a refresher course at his charm school because what he said did not reach out to us to gain our support. More importantly, almost his entire speech was preoccupied with the idea that there is now insufficient time in the Chamber for junior Members of the House to speak. All I say to him is that he is about, I assume, to support a further diminution in Friday sittings in the House, which are opportunities for Members to speak. I assume that he supported the reduction in sitting hours for the House, from the good old days, when we sometimes sat beyond 10 o'clock, to the time until 10 that is now available. I bet that he will vote against our proposal to start at 9.30 am, which would give Members more time to speak.
	All in all, the hon. Gentleman complains about the lack of opportunities for Members to speak; yet at every turn he supports the measures that reduce the opportunities for Members to do so. He ought to make up his mind about his priorities. Our amendments offer more opportunities for the House to deliberate, but it seems that some Labour Members are reluctant to take those opportunities. I add in passing that the hon. Gentleman chose to use his full allocation of 12 minutes. May I suggest that he has a word with the hon. Member for East Lothian (Anne Picking), who, earlier in the debate, managed pithily to make her points in four minutes flat? There are many ways to deal with the problems facing the House, and it did not strike me that the hon. Member for The Wrekin offered us any solutions at all to the problem that he posed for himself and the House as a whole.
	I shall conclude my comments well within the time allocated because I want the leader of the opposition to have ample opportunity to reply to the debate. The Leader of the House, as the Chairman of the Committee, is in by far the best position to explain to those who have taken part in the debate how he will react to some of the very pointed questions that have correctly been aimed in his direction.
	All I say to my hon. Friends is that I hope that they will consider what I have said, both in my opening speech and in my few remarks now. I hope that not only my hon. Friends but Labour Members will seriously consider our amendments, in the spirit in which we have tabled them, in an attempt genuinely to improve the way in which the House works. I hope that, in the end, whatever solution the House comes to by the end of voting tonight, we will unite in a determination to make our proceedings as effective as possible in holding the Government to account.

Robin Cook: We have had an honest and thoughtful debate. I am not one of those who subscribes to the theory that the House is at its best when it is at its least partisan. I have to confess to the House that I am an unreconstructed tribalist, and I think that the House is at its best when it embodies the clash of passion in the nation outside this place. Undoubtedly, however, one of the strengths of tonight's debate is that a number of cross-party points were made on both sides of the Chamber.
	One of the most remarkable speeches, and certainly one of the most candid, was that by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), who urged us to confront the fact that Parliament is not working, and the fact that we need to face up to the scale of change that is necessary if we are to have proceedings that are more topical and more to the point.
	To answer one of the themes that ran through many of the contributions, one of the things we need to do to have debates that are more topical and to the point is to ensure that as many MPs as possible can speak in them, which means that we have to have limits on speeches. The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter. Tapsell)—if I can catch his attention for a second—argued that shorter speeches in debates would strengthen the Executive, but that argument is wholly misconceived. What time limits on speeches do is strengthen the chances of other Back Benchers being able to speak in the debate. A Back Bencher who makes a 30-minute speech, deprives another two hon. Members of their opportunity to make a 10-minute speech.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) made an exemplary speech about time limits, and concluded well within the time limit for the day. He was especially concerned, as he said repeatedly, that such time limits might become mandatory. May I remove that anxiety from his mind and that of the House? The motion before us does nothing to change the discretion that is available to the Speaker as to when to apply time limits: that decision will remain with the Speaker.
	As a matter of fact, the change in Standing Orders before us tonight will provide for slightly longer speeches when time limits apply: motion No. 13 will provide additional injury time for hon. Members to apply to up to two interventions. Having sat through the debate, I can say that one of its strengths has been the way in which hon. Members have taken interventions and replied to them. I believe that that opportunity will be greater as a result of the change to Standing Orders.

Peter Tapsell: If the Leader of the House was present when his hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) made his excellent speech, he will know that he was repeatedly interrupted by his hon. Friends. The hon. Gentleman, in his usual skilful debating way, would have given way and replied to interventions and there would have been a proper debate, but, as he rightly said, under a 12-minute time limit he could not do so, so the interventions were never made and he was unable to reply to them.

Robin Cook: It is a matter of regret to me that I was able to intervene only once during the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), rather than the 15 times that I would have liked to intervene. I shall deal with his speech later in my reply.

Chris Mullin: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Robin Cook: Perhaps my hon. Friend will wait until I get round to his speech.
	I cannot commend to my hon. Friends the amendment in the name of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), although I was strongly tempted by the colleague who suggested that we should all vote for that amendment, if only to enjoy the looks of consternation on the faces of Conservative Members when they won.
	I very much welcome the generous spirit in which the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) spoke and his recognition that the Government's response to his Committee's very interesting report was overwhelmingly positive. There is only one major difference between us—that the Government do not accept the recommendation for topical questions—but I believe that the recommendations we do accept and the changes that we will make tonight will result in a dramatic reduction in the notice for Question Time and will make all Question Times more topical. In those circumstances, we are not persuaded of the case for introducing a new category of topical questions. However, as the hon. Gentleman fairly said, the overall thrust of his Committee's report has been accepted.
	The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) asked me in my winding-up speech to address carry-over and its impact on Bills that are before the House of Lords. He is right in the inference behind his question. This House, through the Standing Orders that we are adopting tonight, can provide carry-over only for Bills that are solely before this House. Once Bills go to the Lords, we have no power, and we will have no power, under Standing Orders to decide for ourselves to carry them over to another Session. In other words, once a Bill has reached the Lords, or if we are involved in ping-pong with the Lords at the end of a Session, we cannot use carry-over to pull open the trapdoor and make the Bill disappear into the following Session. Those who want to retain that power in the Lords need have no anxiety about the Standing Order removing it.
	Most of the debate has been about the sitting hours of the House. Many of those who spoke on hours were keen to express that they did not regard that as the most important issue. I agree with them. Indeed, I fully agree with what the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst has just said. What we do is much more important than when we do it. Most of the debate has been about the question of sitting hours because that is the most divisive issue before the House. I hope that the debate and subsequent votes will enable us to put the issue behind us, one way or another, for the rest of this Parliament. At least in that event the debate will have been cathartic.
	The debate has certainly been entertaining, and I found most entertaining of all the speech of the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle, who is a hardcore traditionalist. He gave a magnificent soaring parody of the case against change. I can assume only that he was put up to it by those who want us to sit earlier hours to discredit the case against it. I say to the hon. Gentleman that I have no argument with those who want to work elsewhere in the mornings rather than come to the House. That is their choice and I would not dream of interfering with it. However, those who choose to do so surely cannot argue if those of us who are full time in our commitment to the House want to adopt hours that are appropriate to a modern and effective Parliament.
	The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle referred to my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin). I thought that my hon. Friend made the best speech for earlier sittings. He stressed the value in terms of public attention of meeting in the morning rather than the afternoon. He stressed the gains to the Home Affairs Select Committee from meeting in the morning rather than the afternoon. I think that he rather lost the Chamber when he suggested that those gains should be confined to that Select Committee and not shared with the Chamber. If morning sittings are such an encouraging success for his Select Committee, surely he should not stop the Chamber sharing the same benefit.

Chris Mullin: My only point, which I repeat, is that there is more to life than what goes on in the Chamber in terms of calling the Executive to account. Although we are not whipped on the Government side of the Chamber—at least I do not think that we are—my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office is handing out a bit of paper telling everybody how to vote. I see that it describes my amendment as wrecking amendment. In fact it is an honest attempt to allow a vote to take place on sitting hours on Wednesdays, about which there is honourable disagreement on both sides of the Chamber. Will my right hon. Friend explain how my amendment comes to be a wrecking amendment and why he is describing it as such.

Robin Cook: This is a matter for a free vote on both sides of the Chamber, as I understand it. I would not think that my hon. Friend would resile from the simple fact that his amendment is devised to stop the House sitting earlier on Wednesdays. To that extent, those who want to see the House change its hours and sit earlier in the morning would be entitled to describe it as a wrecking amendment that is intended to prevent that from happening. I do not think that my hon. Friend is in any position to deny that that would be precisely the effect of his amendment.

Graham Allen: Does my right hon. Friend accept that many of us, while voting for the package, would not share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin)? Indeed, many of us feel that the package does not go far enough. The various compromises that have had to be made may well be acceptable to those who feel like me. This may be the end of the issue after the votes have taken place tonight, but I hope that my right hon. Friend is not closing the book on further reforms emanating from his office and from the Modernisation and Procedure Committees, so that Members can once again discuss, debate and vote upon further reforms that are needed in this place.

Robin Cook: We have only five minutes before the House divides on the proposed reforms. It might be unwise of me to embark on a programme of further reform that comes after tonight. Obviously what my hon. Friend says has some merit to it. Modernisation is necessarily a continuous process. It is not an episode and it will not stop tonight, but how much further we can go after tonight will entirely depend on the extent of support for the measures now before the House.

Michael Fabricant: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Will it be an instance of contempt of the House if, while the Leader of the House says that this is to be a free vote for the Government, it turns out that Government Whips are issuing a note referring to a wrecking amendment and saying—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The point that the hon. Gentleman is making has nothing to do with the Chair.

Robin Cook: I think that I can help the hon. Gentleman, because, perfectly understandably, I have wanted to keep in close contact and make sure that I know what the Government Whips are doing. With the authority of that close interest, I can assure him that any paper from which my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South was quoting did not come from the Government Whips.
	It might be helpful for the House to remember when we talk about the 7 o'clock closures proposed in the Standing Orders for earlier sittings that that will not necessarily be the hour at which all business ends. Technically, what we are voting for in relation to the 7 o'clock closure is the moment of interruption that currently takes place at 10 o'clock. I cannot guarantee to the House that I will always be able in the forthcoming Session to avoid business after that moment of interruption. We have been able to avoid that for most of the past year because we have had a very long Session. The next Session will be shorter. I hope that when hon. Members come to vote, they will also bear in mind that, if they stick with 10 pm as the moment of interruption, it is possible that they will find on occasion in the next Session that they are present not until 10 o'clock, but until midnight.
	I wholly agree with the interesting point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle), who said that most of us on the Labour Benches are at our desks and in our offices before 9 o'clock in the morning. All the Ministers on the Front Bench are in their offices by 8 o'clock in the morning. In those circumstances, I do not think that it is unreasonable for hon. Members to expect to be allowed to be free to go home and prepare for the next morning from 7.30 at night.

Gerald Kaufman: Will my right hon. Friend clarify his response to my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin)? As far as I understand it, motion 6 means that if we want to finish at 6 o'clock on Thursday, we must also vote for the hours that my right hon. Friend wants on Wednesday. The amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South would allow the House to vote separately in respect of Wednesdays and Thursdays. That would give the House a greater opportunity to make decisions about each of those days. How can that be described as a wrecking amendment?

Robin Cook: I would not dispute the interpretation that my right hon. Friend puts on that amendment. It would have the effect of removing earlier sittings on Wednesdays. That is precisely why I would encourage my hon. Friends to resist it, so that we can achieve the gains for this Chamber that my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South described in relation to the morning sittings of his Select Committee.
	As hon. Member after hon. Member has said, we are fond of expressing our views on how the rest of Britain must accept change as a condition of remaining efficient and competitive. From the public services to the financial services, we call upon the rest of the work force to accept that continuous change is the natural order of the modern world.

Geraldine Smith: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Robin Cook: No, I cannot give way now. If my hon. Friend will allow me to continue, we are almost finished.
	The rest of Britain would find it rather strange if we now refused to change ourselves. The reforms on which we are about to vote will give MPs more time for more effective scrutiny, make Question Time more topical, make hon. Members' time in their constituencies more effective by enabling them to plan a year ahead, and yes, they will allow MPs to work hours that approximate more to what the rest of the nation would regard as normal. I believe that these changes will be good for the House. More important, I believe that they will be good for the nation, which will have a more effective, modern and normal Parliament. I urge the House to vote for reform.
	It being 10 o'clock, Mr. Speaker proceeded to put forthwith the Questions necessary for the disposal of business to be concluded at that hour. 
	Amendment proposed: (e) in line 8, leave out from 'Chamber' to 'and' in line 9.—[Mr.Forth.]

Question put, That the amendment be made:—
	The House divided: Ayes 150, Noes 394.

Question accordingly negatived.

Michael Fabricant: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. We have been told by the Leader of the House that this is a free vote because it is a House matter. If it is a free vote, why did a Government Whip announce the result of the vote just now?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order.
	Amendment proposed: (d) in line 10, at end add
	'but is of the opinion that the House should meet at half-past Two o'clock on Mondays, and half-past Nine o'clock on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with a suspension of the sitting between 1.00 p.m. and 2.00 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and the moment of interruption of business falling at Seven o'clock on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Six o'clock on Thursdays.'.—[Mr Greg Knight.]

Question put, That the amendment be made:—
	The House divided: Ayes 94, Noes 441.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Main Question put:—
	That this House approves the Second Report from the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons, and endorses its proposals, in particular for more effective law making by more routine publication of bills in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny, for consultation with Opposition parties on the broad shape of the legislative year and more flexibility in programming, for an annual House of Commons calendar which would allow honourable Members to plan work in their constituencies more effectively and provide sittings in September balanced by an earlier recess in July, for more effective use of the Chamber including more regular use of time limits on speeches, and a Parliament that is more accessible to the public that it serves.—[Mr. Robin Cook.]
	The House divided: Ayes 411, Noes 47.

Question accordingly agreed to.

PARLIAMENTARY QUESTIONS

Motion made, and Question proposed,
	That this House takes note of the Third Report from the Procedure Committee, Parliamentary Questions, House of Commons Paper No. 622, and the Government Response thereto, Cm 5628, and approves the proposals in both for a quota on named day questions, a reduction in the daily quota of questions per department, the introduction of electronic tabling subject to safeguards to ensure the authenticity of questions and the power of the Speaker to modify or halt the system if it appears it is being abused, and the timing and printing of answers to written questions and written ministerial statements.—[Mr. Woolas.]
	Amendment proposed: (a), in line 8, leave out 'and written Ministerial statements'.—[Mr. Greg Knight.]
	Question put, That the amendment be made:—
	The House divided: Ayes 144, Noes 386.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Amendment proposed: (b) in line 8, at end add
	'; and approves the proposals in the Procedure Committee's report for the introduction of a 30-minute session of questions on a single topical subject on Tuesdays and Thursdays.'.—[Sir Nicholas Winterton.]
	Question put, That the amendment be made:—
	The House divided: Ayes 256, Noes 283.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Main Question put and agreed to.

QUESTIONS (AMENDMENTS TO STANDING ORDERS)

Ordered,
	That,
	(1) the following Standing Order (Written statements by ministers) be made:
	A Minister of the Crown, being a Member of the House, may give notice of his intention to make a ministerial statement in written form on a specified day not later than five sitting days after the day on which notice was given: and such statements shall be printed in the Official Report.
	(2) with effect from 1st January 2003, the following amendments to Standing orders be made:
	(a) Standing Order No. 21 (Time for taking questions) be amended as follows:
	Line 13, by leaving out the words 'on the order paper' and inserting the words 'in the Questions Book'.
	(b) Standing Order No. 22 (Notices of questions, motions and amendments) be amended as follows:
	Line 2, at end insert 'in a form determined by the Speaker'
	Line 17, leave out from 'that' to end of line 34 and insert—
	(5) Notice of a question for oral answer may be given only for answer on the next day on which the Member to whom it is addressed is due to give oral answers; and in respect of each such day the Speaker shall specify the latest date and time at which notice may be given and how many questions are to be printed for each Member answering; and only that number of notices of questions (selected at random from those received in a manner to be prescribed by the Speaker) shall be treated as valid notices received on the day concerned;
	Provided that the latest date and time specified by the Speaker shall be such as to enable the notices selected to be printed and circulated
	(a) in the case of questions to the Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales at least four days (excluding Friday, Saturday and Sunday) before the question is to be answered or
	(b) in the case of questions to other Ministers, at least two days (excluding Friday, Saturday and Sunday) before the question is to be answered'.
	Line 38, leave out from 'paragraphs' to end of paragraph and add '(4) and (5) of this order and specifying the arrangements for tabling questions during the adjournment'.—[Mr. Woolas.]

NEW PROVISION FOR EARLIER SITTINGS ON WEDNESDAYS, AND FOR THURSDAYS AND FRIDAYS

Motion made, and Question proposed,
	That, with effect from 1st January 2003 until the end of the Parliament, the Standing Orders and practice of the House shall have effect subject to the following modifications:
	(1) Subject to paragraph (3) of this Order and to paragraph (14)(a) of Standing Order No. 1B (Election of Speaker by secret ballot), the House shall meet on Wednesdays at half-past Eleven o'clock and—
	(a) the moment of interruption shall be at Seven o'clock;
	(b) in their application to such sittings, reference to a specified time in the Standing Orders shall be interpreted as reference to a time three hours earlier, except that reference to Twelve o'clock in Standing Order No. 24 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration) shall be read as reference to half-past Ten o'clock, and that references to One o'clock, a quarter past One o'clock and half-past Three o'clock in Standing Order No. 88 (Meetings of standing committees) shall be read as references to twenty-five minutes past Eleven o'clock, twenty minutes to Twelve o'clock and Two o'clock respectively; and
	(c) divisions deferred under the provisions of the Order (Deferred Divisions) shall be held at half-past Twelve o'clock.
	(2) On Wednesdays the sitting in Westminster Hall shall begin at half-past Nine o'clock, shall be suspended from half-past Eleven o'clock until Two o'clock and may then continue for up to a further two and a half hours (and in calculating that period no account shall be taken of any period during which the sitting may be suspended owing to a division being called in the House or a Committee of the whole House).
	(3) Paragraphs (1) and (2) of this Order shall not apply to a Wednesday sitting which immediately follows a periodic adjournment of more than two days or is the first day of a session, and in the former case the sitting in Westminster Hall shall begin at half-past Nine o'clock and conclude at Two o'clock.
	(4) On Thursdays the provisions of paragraph (1) of this Order shall apply (and the provisions of paragraphs (2) and (3) shall not apply), except that the moment of interruption shall be at Six o'clock and—
	(a) opposed private business under Standing Order No. 20 (Time for taking private business), urgent debates set down for the same day by direction of the Speaker under Standing Order No. 24 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration), opposition half-day debates under paragraph (2)(c)(ii) of Standing Order No. 14 (Arrangement of public business) and half-day Estimates debates under paragraph (3)(b) of Standing Order No. 54 (Consideration of estimates) shall begin at Three o'clock;
	(b) opposition half-day debates under paragraph (2)(c)(i) of Standing Order No. 14 and half-day Estimates debates under paragraph (3)(a) of Standing Order No. 54 shall lapse, or be interrupted, as the case may be, at Four o'clock; and
	(c) references to Eleven o'clock and half-past Eleven o'clock in Standing Orders No. 15 (Exempted business) and No. 17 (Delegated Legislation (negative procedure)) shall be read as references to Seven o'clock and half-past Seven o'clock respectively.
	(5) Unless the House otherwise orders, the House shall not sit on any Friday other than those on which private Members' bills have precedence and—
	(a) when the House is not sitting on a Friday it shall, at its rising on the previous Thursday, stand adjourned till the following Monday without any question being put, unless it shall have resolved otherwise; and
	(b) paragraph (4) of Standing Order No. 12 (House not to sit on certain Fridays) shall apply to any Friday on which the House does not sit by virtue of this Order, with the addition of notices of motions relating to proceedings on bills committed to a standing committee to the notices which may be received by the Public Bill Office under subparagraph (b) of that paragraph.— [Mr. Woolas.]
	Amendment proposed: (a), in line 4, leave out paragraphs (1) to (3).—[Mr. Mullin.]
	Question put, That the amendment be made:—
	The House divided: Ayes 265, Noes 288.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Main Question put:—
	The House divided: Ayes 311, Noes 234.

Question accordingly agreed to.

NEW PROVISION FOR EARLIER SITTINGS ON TUESDAYS

Motion made, and Question put,
	That, with effect from 1st January 2003 until the end of the Parliament, the Standing Orders and practice of the House shall have effect subject to the following modifications:
	(1) Subject to paragraph (3) of this Order and to paragraph (14)(a) of Standing Order No. 1B (Election of Speaker by secret ballot), the House shall meet on Tuesdays at half-past Eleven o'clock and—
	(a) the moment of interruption shall be at Seven o'clock; and
	(b) in their application to such sittings, reference to a specified time in the Standing Orders shall be interpreted as reference to a time three hours earlier, except that reference to Twelve o'clock in Standing Order No. 24 (Adjournment on a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration) shall be read as reference to half-past Ten o'clock, and that references to One o'clock, a quarter past One o'clock and half-past Three o'clock in Standing Order No. 88 (Meetings of standing committees)shall be read as references to twenty-five minutes past Eleven o'clock, twenty minutes to Twelve o'clock and Two o'clock respectively.
	(2) On Tuesdays the sitting in Westminster Hall shall begin at half-past Nine o'clock, shall be suspended from half-past Eleven o'clock until Two o'clock and may then continue for up to a further two and a half hours (and in calculating that period no account shall be taken of any period during which the sitting may be suspended owing to a division being called in the House or a Committee of the whole House).
	(3) Paragraphs (1) and (2) of this Order shall not apply to a Tuesday sitting which immediately follows a periodic adjournment of more than two days or is the first day of a session, and in the former case the sitting in Westminster Hall shall begin at half-past Nine o'clock and conclude at Two o'clock.—[Mr. Woolas.]
	The House divided: Ayes 274, Noes 267.

Question accordingly agreed to.

CARRY-OVER OF BILLS

Motion made, and Question put,
	That in the current Parliament the following Order shall have effect:
	(1) Subject to the following provisions of this order, a Minister of the Crown may give notice of a motion (a Xcarry-over motion") that proceedings on a public bill not completed before the end of the session shall be resumed in the next session of Parliament; and the Speaker shall put any question necessary to dispose of proceedings on such a motion—
	(a) forthwith if the motion is made on the day the bill is read a second time; or
	(b) not more than one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion if the motion is made at any other time.
	(2) A carry-over motion may be proceeded with, though opposed, after the moment of interruption.
	(3) A carry-over motion shall not be made in respect of more than one bill.
	(4) A carry-over motion shall not be made in respect of a bill carried over from a previous session of Parliament.
	(5) Paragraphs (6) to (9) of this order shall apply to any bill ordered to be carried over to the next session of Parliament in pursuance of a carry-over motion.
	(6) If proceedings in Committee on the bill are begun but not completed before the end of the first session, the Chairman shall report the bill to the House as so far amended and the bill shall be ordered to lie upon the Table.
	(7) In any other case, proceedings on the bill shall be suspended at the conclusion of the session in which the bill was first introduced.
	(8) If a bill is presented in the next session in the same terms as the bill reported to the House under paragraph (6) or as it stood when proceedings were suspended under paragraph (7), the bill shall be read the first and second time without question put, shall be ordered to be printed, and—
	(a) in the case of a bill reported from a standing committee under paragraph (6), shall stand committed in respect of those clauses and schedules not ordered to stand part of the bill in the first session, to a standing committee of the same Members as the Members of the standing committee on the bill in the first session;
	(b) in the case of a bill reported from a Committee of the whole House under paragraph (6), shall stand committed to a Committee of the whole House in respect of those clauses and schedules not ordered to stand part of the bill in the first session;
	(c) in the case of a bill committed to a Standing Committee but on which proceedings on the bill were not begun, shall again stand committed to a Standing Committee
	(d) otherwise shall be set down as an order of the day for (as the case may be) committee, consideration, further consideration or third reading.
	(9) Notices of amendments, new clauses and new schedules given in respect of parts of a bill not disposed of in the first session shall be reprinted as notices in respect of the bill as presented and proceeded with under paragraph (8).
	(10) Proceedings on a bill ordered to be carried over to the next session of Parliament shall lapse on the expiry of the period of twelve months from the date of its first reading in this House and the bill shall be laid aside unless the House shall order, in pursuance of a motion under paragraph (11), that proceedings on the bill be extended for a specified period.
	(11) A motion may be made by a Minister of the Crown to extend for a specified period proceedings on a bill which would otherwise lapse under paragraph (10), and any such motion
	(a) may contain provisions amending or supplementing a programme order in respect of the bill;
	(b) may be proceeded with, though opposed, after the moment of interruption;
	and the Speaker shall put any question necessary to dispose of proceedings on any such motion not later than one and a half hours after the commencement of those proceedings.—[Mr. Woolas.]
	The House divided: Ayes 365, Noes 147.

Question accordingly agreed to.

PERMANENT ARRANGEMENTS FOR WESTMINSTER HALL, THURSDAY SITTINGS AND STANDING COMMITTEES

Ordered,
	That, with effect from the beginning of the next Session of Parliament,—
	(1) Standing Order No. 10 (Wednesday sittings) be repealed;
	(2) the following Standing Order (Sittings in Westminster Hall) be made;
	(1) On days on which the House shall sit after an address has been agreed to in answer to Her Majesty's Speech there shall be a sitting in Westminster Hall—
	(a) on Tuesdays and Wednesdays between half-past Nine o'clock and Two o'clock; and
	(b) on Thursdays beginning at half-past Two o'clock and continuing for up to three hours (and in calculating that period no account shall be taken of any period during which the sitting may be suspended owing to a division being called in the House or a Committee of the whole House).
	(2) Any Member of the House may take part in a sitting in Westminster Hall.
	(3) Subject to paragraph (13) below, the business taken at any sitting in Westminster Hall shall be such as the Chairman of Ways and Means shall appoint and may include oral answers to questions under arrangements to be made by him.
	(4) The Chairman of Ways and Means or a Deputy Chairman shall take the chair in Westminster Hall as Deputy Speaker; and the House may appoint not more than four other members of the Chairmen's Panel to sit in Westminster Hall as Deputy Speaker.
	(5) Any member of the Chairmen's Panel may also take the chair at a sitting in Westminster Hall when so requested by the Chairman of Ways and Means, with the duties and powers conferred on additional Deputy Speakers; and Members so appointed shall be addressed by name.
	(6) Any order made or resolution come to at a sitting in Westminster Hall (other than a resolution to adjourn) shall be reported to the House by the Deputy Speaker and shall be deemed to be an order or resolution of the House.
	(7) If a motion be made by a Minister of the Crown that an order of the day be proceeded with at a sitting in Westminster Hall, the question thereon shall be put forthwith, but such motion may be made only with the leave of the House and may not be made on a Friday.
	(8) The quorum at a sitting in Westminster Hall shall be three.
	(9) If at a sitting in Westminster Hall the opinion of the Deputy Speaker as to the decision of a question (other than a question for adjournment) is challenged, that question shall not be decided, and the Deputy Speaker shall report to the House accordingly; and any such question shall be put forthwith upon a motion being made in the House.
	(10) If any business other than a motion for adjournment is under consideration at a sitting in Westminster Hall, and not fewer than six Members rise in their places and signify their objection to further proceedings, that business shall not be further proceeded with in Westminster Hall, and the Deputy Speaker shall report to the House accordingly, and any order under paragraph (7) above relating thereto shall be discharged.
	(11) At the end of each sitting in Westminster Hall, unless a question for adjournment has previously been agreed to, the Deputy Speaker shall adjourn the sitting without putting any question; and proceedings on any business which has been entered upon but not disposed of shall lapse.
	(12) The provisions of Standing Orders No. 29 (Powers of chair to propose question), No. 36 (Closure of debate), No. 37 (Majority for closure or proposal of question), No. 38 (Procedure on divisions), No. 39 (Voting), No. 40 (Division unnecessarily claimed), No. 41 (Quorum), No. 43 (Disorderly conduct), No. 44 (Order in debate), No. 45 (Members suspended, &c., to withdraw from precincts), No. 45A (Suspension of salary of Members suspended) and No. 163 (Motions to sit in private) shall not apply to sittings in Westminster Hall.
	(13) In each Session, the Speaker shall appoint not more than six Thursdays on which the business to be taken in Westminster Hall should be debates on select committee reports chosen by the Liaison Committee.
	and
	(3) the following Amendments to Standing Orders be made:
	Standing Order No. 1B (Election of Speaker by secret ballot)
	Line 90, leave out '10 (Wednesday sittings)' and insert '9 (Sittings of the House)'
	Standing Order No. 9 (Sittings of the House)
	Line 2, leave out 'and Thursdays at half-past two' and insert 'and Wednesdays at half-past two o'clock and Thursdays at half-past eleven'
	Line 6, after 'Tuesday' insert 'Wednesday'
	Line 15, after 'Tuesdays' insert 'and'
	Line 16, after 'and' insert 'at seven o'clock on'
	Line 16, after 'Thursdays', insert '(the Xmoment of interruption")'
	Line 43, leave out 'ten o'clock' and insert 'the moment of interruption'
	Line 52, leave out 'ten o'clock in the evening' and insert 'the moment of interruption'
	Standing Order No. 11 (Friday sittings)
	leave out lines 9 to 11 and insert –
	'(b) the insertion of references to half-past two o'clock as the moment of interruption; and'
	Standing Order No. 14 (Arrangement of Public Business)
	Lines 20 and 23, after 'o'clock' insert 'on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday or four o'clock on Thursday'
	Line 29, after 'o'clock' insert 'or four o'clock'
	Standing Order No. 15 (Exempted business)
	Lines 4, 42, 93 and 96, leave out 'ten o'clock' and insert 'the moment of interruption'
	Line 24, after 'o'clock' insert 'on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday or eight o'clock on Thursday'
	Standing Order No. 17 (Delegated legislation (negative procedure))
	Lines 3 and 5, after 'o'clock' insert 'on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday or half-past eight o'clock on Thursday'
	Line 18, after 'o'clock' insert 'on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday or eight o'clock on Thursday'
	Standing Order No. 20 (Time for taking private business)
	Line 3, leave out 'to three o'clock' and insert 'of an hour after the House sits'
	Line 28, leave out 'Wednesday or Thursday' and insert 'or Wednesday or Four o'clock on any specified Thursday'
	Line 38, after 'o'clock' insert 'or four o'clock'
	Standing Order No. 21 (Time for taking questions)
	Line 5, leave out 'after half-past three o'clock' and insert 'more than one hour after the House sits'
	Standing Order No. 22 (Notices of questions, motions and amendments)
	Line 6, leave out 'after half past ten o'clock in the evening' and insert 'later than half an hour after the moment of interruption'.
	Standing Order No. 24 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration)
	Line 24, at end insert 'if it is a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday or four o'clock if it is a Thursday'.
	Line 27, after 'o'clock' insert 'on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday or half-past Ten o'clock on a Thursday'
	Line 52, after 'o'clock' insert 'or four o'clock'
	Line 59, leave out 'seven o'clock' and insert 'the time when they were postponed'
	Standing Order No. 54 (Consideration of estimates)
	Lines 11 and 40, leave out 'ten o'clock' and insert 'the moment of interruption'
	Lines 18 and 22, after 'o'clock' insert 'on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday or four o'clock on Thursday'
	Line 25, after 'o'clock' insert 'or four o'clock'
	Standing Order No. 55 (Questions on voting of estimates, &c.)
	Line 3, leave out 'ten o'clock' and insert 'the moment of interruption'
	Standing Order No. 88 (Meetings of standing committees)
	Line 8, leave out '(being days on which the House sits)' and insert 'and at such times'
	Line 9, leave out from 'committee' to end of line 10
	Line 11, after 'sit' insert 'at Westminster, on a day on which the House sits,'
	Line 13, after 'afternoon' insert 'on Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays or between the hours of twenty-five minutes past eleven o'clock in the morning and two o'clock in the afternoon on Thursdays'
	Line 14, after 'committee' insert 'to which the proviso to paragraph (1) of this order applies'
	Line 16, after 'o'clock' insert 'or twenty-five minutes past eleven o'clock as the case may be'
	Line 25, leave out 'until a quarter past one o'clock' and insert 'for a quarter of an hour'
	Line 34, at end add—
	'(3) Any standing committee may sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House.'
	Standing Order No. 99 (Scottish Grand Committee (substantive motions for the adjournment))
	Line 34, leave out 'at or after half-past three o'clock' and insert 'five hours or more after the commencement of the sitting'
	Standing Order No. 100 (Scottish Grand Committee (sittings))
	Leave out line 9 and insert 'such hours as may be specified'
	Line 45, after 'o'clock' insert 'on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and at twenty-five minutes past eleven o'clock on Thursdays'
	Standing Order No. 108 (Welsh Grand Committee (sittings))
	Leave out lines 9 and 10 and insert 'such hours as may be specified'
	Line 45, after 'o'clock' insert 'on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and at twenty-five minutes past eleven o'clock on Thursdays'
	Standing Order No. 116 (Northern Ireland Grand Committee (sittings))
	Line 57, after 'o'clock' insert 'on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and at twenty-five minutes past eleven o'clock on Thursdays'
	Standing Order No. 117 (Standing Committee on Regional Affairs)
	Line 37, leave out 'at ten o'clock'
	Standing Order No. 145 (Liaison Committee)
	Line 10, leave out XWednesdays" and insert Xdays"
	Line 11, leave out '(4) of Standing Order No. 10 (Wednesday sittings)' and insert '(13) of Standing Order (Sittings in Westminster Hall)'
	Standing Order No. 154 (Time and manner of presenting petitions)
	Line 22, leave out 'ten o'clock or at half-past two o'clock respectively' and insert 'the moment of interruption'
	Standing Order No. 155 (Petition as to present personal grievance)
	Line 7, leave out 'shall not be interrupted at ten o'clock and'—[Mr. Woolas.]
	DEFERRED DIVISIONS
	Motion made, and Question put,
	That the Order relating to Deferred Divisions, made by the House on 28th June 2001, shall continue to have effect in the next session of Parliament.—[Mr. Woolas.]
	The House divided: Ayes 313, Noes 153.

Question accordingly agreed to.

PROGRAMMING

Motion made, and Question put,
	That Orders A to I relating to the Programming of Bills, made by the House on 28th June 2001, shall continue to have effect in the next session of Parliament.—[Mr. Woolas.]
	The House divided: Ayes 309, Noes 153.

Question accordingly agreed to.

LEAVE OF ABSENCE FOR THE SPEAKER

Ordered,
	That Standing Order No. 3 (Deputy Speaker) be amended as follows—
	Line 7, after 'Speaker' insert 'or where paragraph (2A) of this order applies'
	Line 19, at end add
	'(2A) For the purpose of paragraph (2) of this order, the Speaker shall have leave of absence, if he thinks fit, on any Friday on which the House sits.'—[Mr. Woolas.]

SHORT SPEECHES

Ordered,
	That, with effect from the beginning of the next session of Parliament, Standing Order No. 47 (Short speeches) be amended as follows:
	Line 8, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall, subject to paragraph (2)'.
	Leave out lines 14 and 15 and insert –
	'(2) In relation to any speech, the Speaker shall add to any period specified in paragraph (1) of this order—
	(a) one minute if one intervention is accepted, plus the time taken by that intervention;
	(b) two minutes if two or more interventions are accepted, plus the time taken by the first two such interventions.'.—[Mr. Woolas.]

JUSTICE AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

Motion made,
	That Standing Order No. 152 (Select Committees related to Government departments) be amended as follows:
	In the Table
	Item 7, column 2, leave out from 'Office;' to end of entry;
	After Item 8 insert—
	
		
			  
			 'Justice and Constitutional Affairs Lord Chancellor's Department 11'. 
			  Department (including the work of staff provided for the administrative work of courts and tribunals, but excluding consideration of individual cases and appointments); and administration and expenditure of the Attorney General's Office, the Treasury Solicitor's Department, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Serious Fraud Office (but excluding individual cases and appointments and advice given within government by Law Officers) 
		
	
	––[Mr. Woolas.]
	Hon. Members: Object.

SITTINGS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

Ordered,
	That—
	(i) at the sittings on Wednesday 30th October, Thursday 31st October, Monday 4th November, Tuesday 5th November, Wednesday 6th November and Thursday 7th November, the Speaker shall not adjourn the House until any Messages from the Lords shall have been received;
	(ii) at the sittings on Monday 4th November, Tuesday 5th November, Wednesday 6th November and Thursday 7th November, the Speaker shall not adjourn the House until any Committee to draw up Reasons which has been appointed at that sitting has reported; and
	(iii) at the sitting on Thursday 7th November, the Speaker shall not adjourn the House until a Message is received from the Lords Commissioners.—[Mr. Woolas.]

LONG-STAY PATIENTS

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Woolas.]

Bob Laxton: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Will hon. Members please leave quickly and quietly so that we can proceed with the Adjournment debate?

Bob Laxton: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important matter. Long-stay in-patient benefits affect a cross-section of society, from the youngest invalid to the oldest pensioner. Last year, 10,000 pensioners, 13,000 incapacity benefit and severe disablement allowance recipients and 3,000 income support recipients had their benefit reduced after being in hospital for more than 52 weeks. I shall focus on the effect of that reduction in benefit on just one group: those who suffer from mental illness. I do that partly in the interest of time; it is not to say that any other group suffers less. Indeed, many of the groups overlap. I need only to explain that some of the long-stay hospital patients with mental health problems are pensioners or on disability allowance benefit.
	At Kingsway hospital, a mental health hospital in my constituency, 70 patients have been in hospital for more than 52 weeks. The trust is the appointee for the benefits of 46 of them, with 39 receiving in-patient benefit of #15.10 only. The remaining seven patients also receive disability living allowance low-rate mobility allowance of #14.10 a week.
	I wish to pay tribute to the excellent and ongoing campaigning work by the Derbyshire patients council, which represents mental health patients in my constituency and across a wider area of Derbyshire. I should also like to thank it for its help with the preparation for this debate. I owe a debt of gratitude to Derbyshire mental health services staff, in particular its chief executive. They were obliging enough to dig into their records and gave me some very useful information.
	The plight of mental health patients was brought to my attention by Derbyshire patients council. In May this year, the patients council and a huge busload of Derby mental health services users came down to the House of Commons and presented me with their petition bearing more than 3,700 signatures. They had the opportunity to meet a few MPs. I am grateful to the Minister for taking the time to meet them and to listen to the very valid case that they put to him. I should also like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) who, in her role as chair of the all-party mental health group, tabled an early-day motion on the matter that received cross-party support and the signatures of just under 100 MPs.
	It is clear from the draft mental health Bill that the Government are trying to change their thinking on mental health. Mental health organisations have already expressed many criticisms and I shall not dwell on them, but if the #15.10 of in-patient benefit reflects Government policy on mental health I question our commitment to help those with mental illness. At present, after six weeks in hospital a long-stay mental health patient with no dependants loses all of his or her premium paid with their benefits. The main benefit is reduced to a pocket-money rate of #18.90. After a year, that pocket money is further reduced to #15.10, formally known as the personal allowance benefit or personal requirements allowance. A similar situation applies to those who receive the basic state pension because after 52 weeks they, too, are on #15.10 a week. That works out to 20 per cent. of the standard rate of basic retirement pension or, to put it more plainly, #2.16 a day.
	So what is the principle behind the downrating of in-patient benefit? A 1949 report on the rules by the national insurance advisory committee said:
	XThe broad purpose of insurance benefits is to provide a basic contribution towards the ordinary needs, including maintenance, at times when earnings are interrupted or, as in the case of retirement pensions, cease. Where another public social service, the national health service, is at such times providing maintenance, in addition to treatment, we consider it right that the insurance benefits should be reduced on account of the maintenance of the beneficiary provided under the other service."
	In response to a written parliamentary question that I put to the Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Pensions reiterated that point. He wrote that the principle behind the hospital downrating rules is to prevent double provision from public funds, as well as from the publicly funded national health service, and that it is a Xkey cornerstone" of the system of national insurance introduced 50 years ago.
	I doubt that we should be talking about double provision when single provision itself is called into question. In addition, it is worth bearing in mind the fact that the principle of downrating was introduced nearly half a century ago. Fifty years ago, or perhaps even 25 years ago, hospital patients could rely on their immediate and extended families for financial support. Sadly, that is not the case any more.
	Patients nowadays, especially those with mental health problems, have less contact with their families, making them more reliant on the NHS to look after them and making this weekly allowance more important than before. Even for those mental health patients lucky enough to have contact with their family, there are still financial problems. For example, one patient, who has two grandchildren, would, like any other grandparent, like to treat them during their weekend visits together, but, unlike most grandparents, she cannot afford to do so.
	At this point, I want to raise one particular point. I am puzzled as to how the weekly figure of #15.10 was reached. It is not enough to say that it is 20 per cent. of the basic pension. Why 20 per cent.? Why not 40 per cent. or more? On what basis is the sum calculated? My own estimate, which takes account of the barest of necessities and in their cheapest forms, is that a sum between #21 and #30 would be much more realistic.
	Yes, patients' accommodation and food are covered by the hospital, but the list of day-to-day items that are expected to come out of that money is still staggering. From that meagre sum, patients have to buy toothpaste, toothbrush and other toiletries, newspapers and magazines, stamps and stationery, the occasional haircut and paperback novel, and often cigarettes. I have to admit that as a notorious smoking fascist, I would on almost any other occasion urge someone to use this opportunity to give up the noxious and foul weed. However, the fact remains that even those who do not smoke have a problem meeting all other costs with #15.10 a week. It is grossly inadequate and demeaning for people whose home is a hospital.
	Apart from the items that I have mentioned, patients are also expected to buy clothes and shoes out of their weekly allowance. In his response to a letter that I wrote on behalf of Michael Walsh, chairman of Derbyshire patients council, the Minister said:
	XThe Personal Requirements Allowance is regarded as a reasonable sum to cover small personal items not already provided by the hospital. However it is not expected to cover the more expensive items, such as clothing, which the Health Authority is expected to provide where necessary.'
	The reality is that such provision proves to be lacking. The patients council brought up that point with the Minister back in May, and he expressed sympathy. The fact remains that many mental health patients in Derby have resorted to scouring charity shops for second-hand clothing.
	The mental health services trust in Derby did not allocate any finance specifically for clothing in the financial year 2001-02 and made a one-off payment of #250 to help patients with the purchase of clothing. The trust said that younger patients sometimes apply for a community care grant from the Department for Work and Pensions to provide additional funds for items such as clothing. If they receive a grant, they have an amount deducted from their weekly in-patient benefit to repay the loan over a period set by the social fund. The period is typically 18 months, and the average deduction from the weekly benefit is #3.16 per week, leaving the patient with just #11.94 to spend. To avoid losing a proportion of their benefit, a number of patients in Derby have recently applied for funds from various charities, which are held locally as they do not have to repay that amount and so can retain their weekly benefit.
	There are, I suspect, differences across the country. In an early-day motion on the subject, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak noted that the chief executive of South Birmingham mental health NHS trust commented that the trust regularly supplements the in-patient benefit allowance from care budgets to ensure that basic needs such as clothing, haircuts and other personal items are met, and furthermore that it is a drain on NHS resources.
	The Derbyshire mental health services trust said that it allocated #11,000 to patients' therapeutic programmes during the financial year 2001–02. That money, which is intended to finance certain therapeutic activities such as yoga, becomes instead an essential top-up to patients' weekly benefit. Similarly, the trust provides money so that patients can treat themselves and go on occasional trips, but the money is limited and patients are unable to participate in social functions as much as they would like and as much as would benefit them.
	Many mental health in-patients are not a danger to other people. At the meeting I had with them in May, many said that they would relish the opportunity to reintegrate into the ordinary community, to find some useful role to play in their local area. They said that there is always an unwarranted stigma surrounding mental illness.
	However, what makes things more difficult and increases that stigma even more is when patients have to go about, slovenly dressed in tattered clothes—clothes that are often recycled from those who have died in the hospital. One of the people whom I spoke to said, XI don't want to talk about reintegrating into the community when my clothes immediately make me stand out for the wrong reasons, and when I can't even afford a cup of coffee in the local café."
	If the amount of in-patient benefit increased, it would mean that patients had more and better opportunities to interact with the world outside the confines of a hospital, and money given to them by the mental health services trust that was intended for their therapeutic needs would actually be used towards that end. Perhaps, in the long run, it would mean getting a group of people who are currently reliant on benefits back into work—we would break the cycle of social and economic exclusion. The Government are rightly proud of their record in that respect, but there is still so much more to be done.
	I have already asked the Minister about how the weekly sum of #15.10 is reached, but is it not simply the amount of money that a patient receives after 52 weeks that I question. I also question whether it is actually worth lowering it. Someone receiving income support gets #18.90 in week 52, then #15.10 in week 53 of their stay in hospital. Getting #3.80 a week less than before might not make much difference to many people, but to a person who is on #18.90 every last penny counts. I note that the Benefits Agency estimates that administering the 52-week rule costs #500,000 million, and that #58 million is saved from the 52-week downrating rule. Can that saving can be balanced against the impossibility and misery of trying to get by on #2.16 a day?
	I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will heed these concerns, which are very real but often overlooked, and that he will act accordingly.

Malcolm Wicks: The House of Commons has just voted for substantial parliamentary reform and modernisation to make the House fit for its purpose in the 21st century, so although I stand, and others sit, here at just past half-past midnight, we do so knowing that our nocturnal manoeuvrings will shortly be placed in the dustbin of our nation's parliamentary history, the lid shut tight.
	I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Laxton) on bringing this important issue to the House's attention, and on the way in which he introduced a subject that is especially significant to those of our citizens who suffer mental illness, often over a long period. The contention that the level of benefit is insufficient to meet the needs of long-term hospital in-patients is not new—indeed, my hon. Friend and others have been pursuing a substantial increase in the rate of the allowance for some time, and I commend them for doing so. As he said, last May he brought representatives of Derbyshire patients council to meet me. I promised at that meeting that my officials would discuss these matters with officials from the Department of Health. Such discussions have now been undertaken, and I hope that they have resolved some of the issues of concern to him.
	We are dealing with two distinct issues: first, the rules on benefits paid by my Department and, secondly, the maintenance support that long-term patients require. The personal allowance for long-term in-patients must be seen in the context of the overall benefit rules for people going into hospital. The principle behind the reduction in benefit is, as my hon. Friend acknowledges, not a new one—indeed, it has been a basic feature of the benefits system since the introduction of the national insurance scheme in 1949. The principle is a simple one: while the national health service provides free maintenance as well as free treatment, maintenance benefits, which are also paid out of state funds, should not be paid in full indefinitely. To do otherwise would be to provide twice for the same items. The rules have been applied, albeit with minor modifications, for more than 50 years.
	Adjustments for periods spent in hospital are applied to most social security benefits. Currently, there is no reduction during the first six weeks in hospital, then an initial reduction is made—for example, a benefit such as the basic state pension would be reduced to #46.80 for a person without a dependant. After 52 weeks in hospital, benefit is further reduced to 20 per cent. of the prevailing rate of the basic state pension. As my hon. Friend says, that is currently #15.10 a week. In addition, the rules also protect a person's housing costs. It is important to acknowledge that.
	Provided that the absence from home is expected to be less than a year, people in hospital who have low incomes and who retain a liability to pay rent for their homes can get housing benefit as long as they intend to return home and their home has not been let or sub-let.
	We believe that these rules strike a fair balance between what the state should provide financially and the provision that individuals should make for themselves. However, we recognise that the rules are not immutable, and we have already committed ourselves to modernising them. To coincide with the introduction of the state pension credit next October, we plan to extend the period before the initial reduction in benefit from six weeks to 13 weeks. This change is a recognition of the fact that in today's society—my hon. Friend was urging us not to look back 50 years but to consider today's circumstances—people have more ongoing fixed commitments, such as housing costs and utility bills while they are in hospital. So people will be able to keep their full benefit for a full quarter before any downrating takes place. This will give them more time to plan their budget for when downrating does take place.
	I shall put the matter in context numerically. More than 97 per cent of people are discharged from hospital within 13 weeks. The vast majority will not have their benefits, which are designed with the cost of everyday living in mind, touched during their stay in hospital. Those whose stay is longer than 13 weeks will also gain, I believe, from having a longer period where their benefits remain unchanged, as they too will have time to plan for their future circumstances. I hope that that shows our commitment to improve benefits for people who go into hospital, and perhaps puts the numbers in context. I hope that it shows also that we have been listening to my hon. Friend, his colleagues and his constituents.
	Nevertheless, I recognise that my hon. Friend is predominantly concerned with a specific group of patients—those long-stay patients who are in hospital for longer than a year, and sometimes years, such as those suffering from long-term psychiatric conditions. As I have already explained, such people receive the lowest rate of benefit entitlement, which is #15.10 a week. That is because the national health service has assumed the responsibility for maintaining those patients who have spent more than 52 weeks in hospital.
	This rate is, in effect, a personal allowance—it is just that. It is designed to meet a patient's personal day-to-day requirements such as newspapers, magazines and toiletry items, and other things of their choosing. The allowance has historically increased year on year in line with prices and so has maintained its relative value.
	The Social Security Advisory Committee considered the level of the hospital personal allowance rate in 1987. To quote from the committee's conclusions,
	Xsome patients, particularly those who are more active, may find"
	the allowance
	Xis not sufficient for their needs, but we have no research to convince us the level . . . should be raised".
	Nevertheless, in the past two years we have increased the allowance by more than prices in line with the above-inflation increases in the basic state pension.
	It is important to recognise that the allowance does not, and was never designed to, cover the purchase of more expensive items, such as clothing. These are the statutory responsibility of the local NHS trust to provide where necessary. Where there are abnormal needs because of a patient's condition or illness, and the patient or relatives are unable to afford the extra cost, the hospital also has discretion to top up the allowance to meet such needs.
	I know that each individual's financial circumstances vary, particularly in cases where in-patients are more physically active. However, it has been broadly accepted that it is impracticable to require the benefit system to have regard to the detailed circumstances of each individual before the appropriate reduction of benefit can be assessed. That is why general rules have been adopted and common rates of benefit are payable.
	I know that my hon. Friend, and other hon. Members and organisations such as MIND and his local organisations, have campaigned for the dignity of long-term patients in hospital, particularly those suffering from mental health problems. His points about clothing and the dignity of having new clothes rather than second-hand ones would have a resonance in any century, as they certainly do in the 21st century. I listened very carefully to what he said in that regard.
	We consider that the current rates of benefit for people in hospital are fair and that the allowance is adequate to meet the day-to-day requirements of a person in hospital. Obviously, where there are local issues, they should be dealt with at a local level through contact with the chairman or chief executive of the national health service trust concerned. Nevertheless, we recognise that, for the system to work properly, we need to ensure that the highest standards of care, including the provision of items such as clothing, is maintained for patients requiring long-term care in hospital. That is why the Department of Health intends to ensure that best practice is shared throughout our national health service. Its officials will be happy to discuss the best way forward with relevant stakeholders at both national and local levels, including in my hon. Friend's constituency.
	To sum up, the current arrangements for hospital downrating have been in place for many years and are designed to give the appropriate level of help, depending on the length of time spent in hospital. We are committed to improving those rules by allowing in-patients to keep their full benefit for 13 weeks rather than six weeks, as at present. For long-term patients, social security meets a limited range of needs in a personal allowance and the national health service has a statutory duty to meet other maintenance costs. As I said, the Department of Health will ensure that best practice in the care of long-term patients is shared throughout the national health service.
	I trust that that deals at least in part with the proper concerns of my hon. Friend. We are considering the issue seriously and work is in progress to improve the arrangements for long-term patients, and not least those with often debilitating psychiatric conditions. I am grateful to him for bringing this vital matter to the attention of the House. It is an important matter to discuss at any hour of the day, although we will perhaps discuss it one day at a more civilised hour.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at thirteen minutes to One o'clock.